


Credits and Credibility

by CaptainDeryn



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Multi, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Some Fluff, Some angst, moving over from tumblr, non cohesive stories, some both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-07 11:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 42
Words: 43,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16853182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainDeryn/pseuds/CaptainDeryn
Summary: A complication of stand-alone stories and prompts from tumblr all centered around swtor and my characters on swtor.





	1. Era and Noa: "I'm bleeding. Oh god I'm bleeding"

**Author's Note:**

> These will mostly be oc/oc relationships, just a forewarning. But otherwise, this is just one mass grouping of my prompt fills from 2016 onwards!
> 
> "I’m bleeding! Oh, oh my god." Era/Noa (Imperial Agent x Intelligence Fixer)   
> (No longer canon to these characters)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Erabelle (Imperial Agent/Cipher Nine) x Noa (Intelligence Agent (Fixer))

Sky troopers had swarmed the bombed out sectors of Kaas City in numbers greater than Erabelle had ever seen. More sky troopers than she had ever thought possible to create, train and fight. She had been separated from Noa, hadn’t seen her since the first wave of troopers had landed. 

Her thigh ached from the sheer amount of stims and medpacks she had gone through, making her heart race with more than just fear and turning her mind to run at a mile a minute. Her rifle was gone, locked away on her ship that could have possibly been bombed out at this point, leaving her with only the vibroblade and stims she had left. Stars she wished she didn’t insist on leaving her weapons on her ship. She should have known this would happen. Noa may not even be armed. The thought picked up her pace as she ran through the streets of the city. 

Great buildings, reduced to rubble and ash, so many dead and injured littering the streets. It was like something out of her nightmares. 

A blur of streets later, Erabelle had lost track of exactly where she was running to, she finally found Noa with her trusted droid. “Noa!” She shouted, covering the distance between them with a final burst of energy. “Are you alright?” 

The droid chirped loudly but Erabelle couldn’t make out what the long string of beeps and chirps meant. She took a stuttering step forward and felt Noa’s hands grasp her shoulders. “I’m fine. Are you?” Her grip tightened on the small woman’s arms as she swayed dangerously. “Era?” 

Erabelle was suddenly hyper aware of the pounding picking up in her head, probably all the stims wearing off.  When she brought her hand to her forehead she felt a sharp bolt of pain as her fingertips brushed across one set of the cybernetics implanted in her temples. Her fingers came away wet with blood.  

“Oh.” She squeaked, just as Noa’s hand brushed across a wound she hadn’t noticed across her shoulder, the touch sending a burning pain like fire across her chest. Transfixed she stared at the blood staining her fingertips, Noa’s worried voice sounding miles away. “N-noa, I’m bleeding. Oh, oh kriff.”  The stims were definitely wearing off, Era could feel the heat of blood sticking her shirt to various wounds she could not recall getting. The sounds of aircraft overhead burst through the roaring in her head and she flinched, knees giving way as the sudden movement brought another wave of the pain through her head. The Miraluka’s arms kept her from hitting the pavement and the steady stream of underwater sounding voices turned her way again. 

She found she couldn’t follow the rapid fire of words and tried to recoil, curling into a ball as the movement sent another stab through her splintered cybernetics. Through the blur she could hear her name, followed by more she couldn’t make out. Through squinted eyes the brimmed with tears she saw the white boots of more sky troopers. That, the thunder of their boots, was the single thing that breached her senses in sickening clarity. 


	2. Rielay Taqq: Finding Someone You Don't Expect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Finding someone you didn't expect" for Rielay Taqq (Smuggler)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Old work

 Rielay swore profusely, pressing her back against the rubble she had sunk behind. The profanity broke off sharply into a shuddering breath as another bought of pain stabbed through her…she wasn’t sure where it came from to be honest. She had taken a brief inventory shortly after the blast she had set off backfired and she knew her cybernetic arm, pulled close to her chest, was mostly torn off and a blaster shot to her thigh was bleeding profusely. The entire left half of her vision was dark, clearly she had karked up those cybernetics as well. Another quick check proved her right again, the pack she kept her medical supplies in had been crushed when she had been thrown by the blast, leaving nothing useful. 

 _Damnit_. 

Coming alone to Corellia had been a stupid idea. Hugo had offered to play back up, but he was recovering from an injury of his own. Emeldir was actually planetside, but he had his own work to be doing and sabotaging a weapons factory controlled by Imperials was not a part of that. He would have gladly come with her. But she had refused. And she was paying for it. 

Another check and Rielay swore again, her commlink had been fried. She let her head fall back against the rubble and with a grimace sat down heavily on the ground from her crouched position. This was bad, even by her standards. More Imperials would surely be responding to the alarms that had been blaring before the detonators went off and if she wasn’t out before then she wouldn’t be getting out at all. She couldn’t imagine getting up, let alone making at to a Republic safe point, not with all the Imps she’d had to take down just to get here. 

That’s when she heard the footsteps and jolted back to action, hissing out a breath as she forced her protesting body back to a crouch, dropping the hand that had been cradling her cybernetic arm close to her chest drop to her blaster. Briefly peeking over the edge of the rubble brought a Zabrak into her sights, creeping along the edge of a building just out of range of probe droids. “Hey!” She called, but her voice didn’t carry far enough. If she didn’t act fast the Zabrak would be out of sight. With shaking aim she drew her blaster and fired a shot, hitting the spot just behind the stranger, sending sparks flying a little closer than she had intended. The recoil from her blaster sent a sharp stab through her shoulder and she dropped her weapon, grabbing the edge of the rubble to steady herself as she bowed her head. 

“What the hell was that- _oh_.” She brought her eyes back up, moving to pull her cybernetic arm close again, kriff she had really messed up now if the expression the Zabrak wore was anything to go by. “What happened to you?” 

“Really bad life decisions.” Rielay snapped, clenching her teeth as another wave of pain followed even the slightest movement. “You got a com?” 

He was still watching her with suspicion, his hand not so casually resting on his own blaster. Her’s lay out of reach for her and she didn’t have _time_ for this. “Comlink, holocommunicator?” She ground out. “Need to get a signal out.” 

She let out a large breath of relief as the Zabrak crouched in front of her, holding out his comlink and then rummaging around while she sent a distress signal to the nearest Republic outpost with her coordinates and produced two kolto injectors. 

Their eyes met as she tentatively reached out to grab them. “Thank you.” 

A few gruff shrug and the return of the suspicion was her response but at this point Rielay could care less. By the time a Republic transport came the stranger was gone without giving a name. 

 


	3. Rielay and Hugo: "The difference between your opinions and mine is that mine are right."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is OLD and OUTDATED to the canon of these characters!

Rielay leaned against the wall of the medic center on Quesh, eyeing the venom ‘miner’, that she strongly suspected was a slave that the Republic sugar coated for the purpose of their image, she had brought in only a few days prior. Then he had been half dead, and while he still appeared to be a sitting back of bones decorated with a strong helping of still healing chemical burns, he was meeting her side eyed look alertly and with irritation. Clearly he was not impressed with her offer. 

“What makes you think I would want to go with you, a law-breaking, possibly insane  _smuggler?”_

“Well that’s a rude thing to say,” Rielay said, narrowing her eyes. “Especially to someone who just saved your life.” 

“Only because you were asked.” The slave rolled his eyes before fixing her once again with a withering look. “If that young kid hadn’t pointed me out you would’ve walked right on by.” 

“Your opinion of me is surprisingly low.” Rielay waved a hand in the air dismissively. “But that’s the difference between your opinion and mine. I’m right.” 

“So you are a life-saving hero with too big an ego and an unhealthy obsession with credits?” The slave met her incredulity with a sly smirk and Rielay barked out a disbelieving laugh. The audacity this man had, for all he knew she could be a high ranker officer undercover. But he wasn’t necessarily wrong, and as much as she wanted to be irritated by the assessment she couldn’t help but be amused. He’d accept her offer, big ego and all. She just had a feeling about it. 


	4. Rielay and Emeldir “Look at me—just breathe, okay?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rielay (female smuggler) and Emeldir (male smuggler) in what is now a KOTFE/ET AU

Rielay didn’t learn exactly what happened to Emeldir on the Eternal Throne, not until years later when he finally worked up the courage to open up to her. She hadn’t asked, not after he returned to the Alliance base, not even in the weeks that followed. But it had to have been bad, the sudden distance in his eyes or the way he jumped at everything wasn’t caused by the fighting. 

His speech had rocked the galaxy, rallied Republic, Zakuulan and Empire civilians and troops alike, but there was still something distinctly off about the way he spoke, a forced tone that she couldn’t quite place. 

She hadn’t expected him to snap two days after being pushed into the role of a galactic wide peacekeeper. 

“Taqq I need to talk to you.” He had pulled her aside after he had been released from a long day of meetings and his voice had been strained, eyes looking like a cornered animal’s. 

“Of course.” She had had to jog to keep up with his long-legged stride until the reached the large, grassy area where his ship the  _Phoenix_  was grounded. She could only guess he brought her there so that no one would be listening or interrupt them. 

“I don’t think I can do this.” Almost immediately he had begun to pace, scrubbing a hand through his shaggy hair as the other hand gestured wildly. “This Commander thing, being a peacekeeper for the entire galaxy. For the Empire, Republic, Zakuul, so many people already rely on me and I failed them. Good people, like Vette and so many others, died because of me, because I couldn’t do my job right.” His voice dropped, becoming small. “I think Lana made a mistake pulling me out of carbonite, that let Valkorian take over and…and even though he’s gone, is he really  _gone_?” 

Rielay had listened to him with her head tilted and brows knitting the longer he went on, slowly losing track of what he was getting at as he spiraled further into his own panicked thoughts. She shook her head as there was a break in the torrent of his words. She covered the distance between them and stood on her tiptoes to place her hands on his shoulders. His eyes snapped to hers, his breath coming in the quick rise and fall of his chest. What had the Alliance done to him? “Kid,” she started slowly. “Look at me—just breath, okay?” 

He was silent for several moments, holding her gaze until he seemed to deflate, the panic that had driven him to her in the first place being draining away back to the exhaustion that had seemed to stalk him like a shadow. Rielay sighed as he bowed his head, wrapping her arms around him in a hug and rubbing her hand up and down his back comfortingly. He returned the embrace, still wrapped in his sudden silence. “You’re going to be alright,” Rielay assured. “You won’t be stuck here forever.” 

When they have forced their separate ways again a cold mask had fallen over Emeldir’s features, leaving Rielay with a sinking feeling. Something had happened, something she couldn’t see. 


	5. Era and Noa: “You weren’t supposed to laugh!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erabelle and Noa in escapades in hair braiding 
> 
> (Imperial agent x Imperial Intelligence oc)

Era has not been allowed to look at herself in the mirror for at least an hour. Instead, she has been trapped on the couch with Noa’s fingers threading through her hair. Noa’s droid has been adding it’s input steadily for the whole time, even sparking an argument between itself and the Miraluka. 

Erabelle herself doesn’t follow much of what is going on. There have been a few tangled that have been caught, several times that she has been stabbed in the ear by a hairbrush, and a lecture on how she needs to stop letting her hair become a womp rat’s nest on missions. But she has no idea what Noa is doing, or what spurred this adventure in the first place. She had walked through the door after running errands only to be shoved down on the couch and taken hostage. It’s not like she minds, there’s something soothing about Noa’s hands running through her hair, and something natural about the way they fit together. 

When she’s finally allowed to go look in the mirror she can’t stop herself from giggling. Noa had been attempting to braid her hair, that much was obvious. It was certainty…braided in a loose sense of the word, Era noted with a widening grin as she touches the twisted mess of pristine white hair that lays somewhat crookedly on her head. 

“You weren’t supposed to laugh!” Noa complained from her spot still on the couch. “It’s supposed to look nice.” The droid made a noise that somehow managed to sound condescending and Era laughed again as Noa made a face at the droid. 

“Era looked at herself in the mirror again before turning back to the miraluka. “I’m not laughing at it.” She assured, shoulders shaking as she suppressed another surge of laughter. “I just don’t know what you were going for.” 

Noa motions her over again, pulling her back down onto the cushions. “I was trying to do something fancy.” Her hands roamed over Era’s head clumsily as she searched for…something, Era honestly didn’t know. Suddenly she froze. “I don’t know how to get this out.” 

“Noa!” Era exclaimed, turning her head to gape at the woman sitting behind her. “You  _what_?” 

“Don’t be dramatic.” Noa admonished. “I’ll fix it. Somehow.” 


	6. Five and Thea: “I set up the blanket fort. The password to get in is three words.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2018 work--family fluff for a male imperial agent (not Cipher Nine) and an ex-sis agent

Five had spent the last few minutes pacing around their home “looking” for his daughters. If it wasn’t the mad giggling that gave them away it was the mass of couch cushions, sheets and blankets that had taken over the living room. 

He paused outside the makeshift fort, looking around in theatrical bewilderment. “I wonder where they could be…I’ve looked  _everywhere_.” 

Almost on cue a young, frowning face poked out of the draped blanket that made up the door of the fort, scowl admonishing. “ _Papa_! We’ve been here this  _entire_ time.” 

She was yanked back in by a pair of small hands on her shoulders, a hissed, “Way to blow our cover!” following. 

With a smile, Five crouched down at the entrance to the blanket fort, pushing the draped blanket aside to reveal his daughters and Thea in their makeshift hide out. Erin snatched the blanket, barring the entrance with a poorly-held scowl as giggles started to take over again. Claire grinned with a big wave of greeting, Agent held captive in the crook of one arm. The loth cat blinked large amber eyes at Five slowly, offering a chirp in greeting himself. 

“You can’t get in without the password.” Erin explained firmly, matter of factly. 

“A password…” Five repeated, cutting his eyes over to Thea as he wracked his brain for whatever sort of password their two girls could have dreamt up. Agent he may have been, that didn’t make him any good at deciphering the secret code the twins seemed to share. 

“I helped set up the blanket fort,” Thea stage-whispered conspiratorially. “the password is three words.” 

“ _Mum_!!” Erin wheeled on her mother, an exasperated bite in the one syllable. “Don’t give it away!” 

Claire looked between her father, mother, and sister. “Maybe we should…how else will papa be protected from the–”

Already before the thought was finished Erin had the intensely focused look of one halfway through coming up with a story darting between Claire and her father. 

“ _Or_ papa could really be a spy! Pass. Word.”

Biting back a chuckle–stars help him with that cutting reasoning. “Three words…” he mused. “Is it…purple fluffy nexus?” 

That earned him a new barrage of bubbling laughter, but not entry into the blanket fort. 

“Dancing, singing, Agent?” Five’s eyes fell on his loth-cat, who’s ears flicked, though he didn’t seem perturbed at all by the little girl’s grip around him. 

“Agent doesn’t sing!” Claire shook her head vehemently before turning a critical eye to the cat. “Or dance.” 

“My mistake, I must have been thinking of another cat.” Five shrugged before glancing over at Thea with an amused smirk. “ _Orr_ …is it ‘I love you’“ he snatched Erin into one armed hug, catching Claire in the other. The girls squealed, wriggling to escape. “Alright, alright!” Erin yelped, finally breaking free. “We’ll let you in.” 

“ _But_ , only if you grab the book!” Claire’s bright blue eyes looked him pleadingly. “ _Pll_ eaasee.” 

Pretending to consider refusing against Claire’s insistence until finally relenting. “Fine, fine, I will go and get the book.” Pushing himself off the floor with muscles protesting he padded into the girls’ bedroom, pulling the worn book with it’s once vibrantly printed cover off the bedside table. 

Erin had moved from her spot guarding the doorway, instead waiting patiently with a stuffed mooka clutched her her arms. Thea moved over when he ducked him, offering a smile as he settled down beside her. Almost immediately the girls were stuck to his side, with Claire weaseling in between him and Thea and Erin ducked next to his side on the other. Agent, escaped from Claire’s grasp at last, jumped into Thea’s lap and settled down, purring. 

Opening the book to the bookmarked page, Five cleared his throat and picked up where they had left off the night previous. “’My dear fellow,’ he said…” 

“You need to do the voices!” Both girls corrected in unison and Five held up a hand in surrender, going back to the beginning of the line and dropping his voice to the one they had decided on for that character, a wizened old wizard. “‘My dear fellow,’ said he, “whenever  _are_ you going to come? What about  _an early start_ …”


	7. Wren and A'trixa “You can’t rush perfection.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two high society sith wives--Wren and Trix--try to arrive fashionably late...if that's a thing.

“Vazuna,” Wren arched a brow at Trix in the mirror as her wife leaned against the door frame, elegant in a form fitting dress and very clearly ready to leave. As she had been five minutes past their planned departure time. “are you ready to leave yet?” 

Braiding another delicate golden chain into the half of her hair she had loosely pulled back, Wren’s lips parted in concentration. “You can’t rush perfection, darling. As I recall  _I_ wasn’t the one that required six different dress changes before stepping out of the closet.”

Trix scoffed, dropping her head against the door and meeting Wren’s pointed look. “I wouldn’t complain if you didn’t choose dresses that look like something the nekarr dragged in.” 

Another braid and Wren was finished, stepping back as she intentionally loosened strands to frame her face and rearranged the length of dark waves falling heavy across her shoulders. “The first one was blue, one was sleeveless, the other three didn’t fall just right..hardly something the nekarr dragged in.” 

“Blue is  _boring_ on you, sleeveless is out of season and the folds on the others were all wrong.” Brow stalk arching, Trix dragged her teeth over her lower lip. “I have no complaints about this one.” 

Neither did Wren, it was a dress sitting in the back of their closet that had looked passable on the hangar, nothing worth giving a second glance unless absolutely necessary. But on, the black fabric–lace textured sheer in all the right places–hugged her body just right and the gold embroidery drew the attention it deserved. She wished she had thought to wear it sooner. “Are you sure we’re going to makeit out the door? But,” She pulled a bit more at her hair, lips twisting into a frown. “This looks terrible.” 

The Pureblood strode across the room, reaching over Wren’s shoulder to pick up a thin layered necklace in the same gold as the chain in her hair. Pushing her hair aside Trix lay the cool metal against Wren’s skin, clasping it. Her lips were warm, teasing with the graze of her teeth against delicate skin where the clasp sat before she let Wren’s hair fall back into place. A dare, the start to a testing of wills they played to pass the time at dull social events. 

The growl that Trix’s voice dipped into–intentional and they both knew it–sent the best kind of shiver down Wren’s spine. “ _Vazuna_ , be kind to me, you look lovely, let us go.” 

Turning her eyes from the mirror Wren offered a dramatic sigh in response, mischievous smile returning, they were toying with each other and they knew it. “ _Fine_ , if you insist. I have some minor sith lords who could use a reminder of their standing at this event anyways.”

She stood, heels clicking on the floor. Even with the added height she was barely eye to eye with Trix, who smiled down at her. “Something to look forward to then?” 

 Wren’s eyes twinkled in mischief. “Nothing a stern look and a reminder of exactly where I stand in this hierarchy won’t solve.” Tugging the hanging sheer back into it’s proper position across her arm she looped her arm through Trix’s, smiling up at her. “We shouldn’t keep them waiting any longer in anticipation.” 


	8. Risha and Emeldir:  “Everything reminds me of you.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst for Emeldir (male smuggler) and his wife, Risha. Takes place in KOTFE timeskip--which is AU in my timeline now

**Risha/Emeldir**

From: Risha Drayen

Subject: Emeldir please

Where are you? It’s been months Emeldir, whatever game your playing…just let it go. 

Look, I get it, if escaping from Marr’s ship and whatever psycho controls that massive fleet that attacked means you’ve had to go under the radar. I know that you’ve probably got it in that stupid head of yours that laying low will somehow protect us, but we don’t need protecting. We need you home. 

Just in case you somehow didn’t catch that: we need you  _home_. 

~~Leaving hasn’t~~

~~Whatever you thought you were doing~~

~~You’re crew it gone. They’re telling me you’re dead and that I should just move on. But I can’t~~

~~Everything reminds me of you now. And I know you’re going to scoff at that but it’s true. I hear you in the music they play along the market sector–that music you’d always play on your violin. I’ll think I hear you in the debates in the Senate plaza.~~

~~I don’t want to step into the Phoenix again. You’re ghost is everywhere, the bridge, your quarters–~~

~~Fuck this.~~

We need you home. You’re the one thing that keeps this crew together and we’re on our last threads. I don’t know what we’re going to look like once Saresh and the holonews stops focusing on the “brave survivors of Darth Marr’s ship.” 

You’ve always said you can find you’re way out of most everything, remember? Don’t let this be the first time you can’t. 

I was supposed to be the one to run first. Not you. 

~~Dammit Emeldir. What are you _doing_? I miss you. I want you back with me. I don’t care what you’ve done–escaped, run, even if you’ve somehow found it in that heart of yours to find someone else–just tell me you’re alive.~~

Don’t make those tables turn, don’t.

—–

_[Send message?]_

_[Message Failed to Send. Retry?]_

_[Message Failed to Send. Retry?]_

_[Delete Message?]_

_[Message Deleted]_


	9. Rielay and Esrin: “Well I fucked up again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rielay (fem smuggler) and Esrin--a Republic trooper--get into shenanigans on Coruscant

 Over the years Esrin had become far to adept at reading the tones in Rielay’s voice. Her tone over to words in particular: “Esrin…” followed by some form of endearment. 

That combination only meant one thing: trouble. 

Sometimes it was: “Esrin, honey, I  _might_ have made one of Nar’s gang leaders upset, my job is going to take a bit longer”. Sometimes it was, “Es, I love you  _but_ I fucked up and now Republic customs won’t let me off planet for an extra day. Apparently telling exactly where they can stick their regulations doesn’t go as well as you’d think.” 

There was never a combination of those two words, spoken in that  _specific_ tone of voice that didn’t either take a year or two off his life expectancy or make him roll his eyes. This time was no different. 

He had  _thought_ that since they were on Coruscant–in part for a series of important debriefings he had been called to, part to reintroduce Rielay back to Sirixa as something more in their little family than the smuggler who had helped her on Balmorra–that perhaps they could have a few days of trouble-free calm. 

He should’ve known better than that as soon as Rielay had pulled a spare key for Emeldir’s apartment out from some obscure hiding place that involved using him as a leverage point with the promise that Emeldir had it there for a reason. He didn’t doubt that Rielay’s fellow captain had no issue with her crashing in his apartment, he was just more concerned with the mischief in his girlfriend’s eyes and what the neighbors might’ve thought had they looked out their windows. 

When his holocomm rang he had just stepped into said apartment, the noise from lines of speeder traffic below muffling as the door closed. What he expected when he saw Rielay’s holofrequency, he wasn’t sure. 

“Esrin, baby, are you home?” Ever so sweet–too sweet–Rielay asked. Convieniently audio-only Esrin couldn’t even peek at where she was. Stars help him. 

“I  _am_.” Without preamble he leaped right to the only assumption he could make. “What did you do?” 

“What did  _I_ do?” If indigence wasn’t Rielay’s number one deflection tactic for her bad decisions he might have believed her, for a moment. Faux sweetness mixed with innocence saturated her voice and he just  _really_ hoped she hadn’t made the Black Sun or Justicar angry again. “ _But_ since you asked…you know how I’m working on fixing the ramp on the Promise?” 

The Promise…in the Coruscant spaceport, far out of any gang territory, where she had been making small repairs and upgrades on the freighter twice as old as she was to keep herself busy in the interim when he was caught in meetings and Siri was in school. Unless the Black Sun had returned to her ship on a three year grudge then it had to be something else. “..yeah?” 

“Well,” She drew out the word a few extra syllables. “I fucked up. Again. The ramp’s stuck and I can’t get it unstuck.” 

Esrin couldn’t bite back the–frankly rather relieved–amused snort that escaped him. “Okay. Can you get out?” 

Peevishly, any and all sheepishness gone she mumbled: “No.” 

He was  _definitely_ failing to keep the amusement from his voice now and he knew it was going to get him in trouble. “Don’t you have over ways to get out?” 

That peevishness was directed at him now in full force, snapping through the holofrequency like a wip. “Unless I want to shoot my one escape pod through the side of this fucking hangar,  _no.”_

Grabbing the key for his speeder off the counter where he had put it and outwardly chuckling now Esrin shook his head, through he knew Rielay couldn’t see it. “I’ll be there in ten.” 

When he punched in the code for the  _Promise’s_ hangar he walked into Rielay drawing on every creative curse in her inventory, trying to squirm her way out from under the nearly-closed ramp. She had her feet braced on the lip of her ship, almost like she was trying to push the ramp down with her body weight. 

Hearing the hangar door hiss open she tripped her head back to look at him upside-down, red curls going haywire and a smile splitting her cheeks that were pink with exertion. “Hey!” 

“Hey you.” Inspecting the scene with unabashed humor and no small amount of confusion as to how she got into the predicament into the first place, he toyed with how best no to wound her pride when it came to her ship. “How can I help?” 

Squirming some more, she had down to the middle of her back off the ramp and hanging over the several feet of worryingly empty space, she strained for something just out of her reach. “Can you reach over here? There should be a release pin. I almost had this damn thing up all the way until it stuck, and now it won’t go up  _or_ down.” 

He walked over, scanning the underside of the ship until he found what she was trying to reach, a metal pin her finger tips were just too far to brush against. Before he reached for her she caught the strap of his armor in one hand and tugged him down to bonk their lips together in something resembling a kiss before saying–ever so innocently like it was no issue–”Just be prepared to catch me when you pull the pin.” 

That gave him pause, meeting her upside-down look incredulously. “I’m sorry,  _what_?” 

Rolling her eyes, Rielay twisted some more and instinctively his hand went to support behind her shoulder blades as she made a grab at the pin and missed. “That pin released the ramp. It’s going to fall a good five feet, I’d like to not hit the ground with it.” 

With a long suffering look Esrin cautiously pulled the pin, snagging Rielay under the arms and pulling her off the ramp as it clattered to the floor, easily supporting her weight. 

With some dexterity Rielay maneuvered herself so she could lock her legs around Esrin’s waist, loop her arms across his shoulders, and kiss him in earnest this time. “My  _hero_.” The inflection was all affection, missing all the peevish sarcasm from earlier, said with a grin instead of an implied scowl. 

She was a mess–red hair flying every which way out of it’s ponytail, her white button shirt stained with oil and the familiar smell of metal and engine grease clinging to her–but she was his mess, and he couldn’t help but smile back.


	10. Emeldir/Risha  "I could never forget you."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a very disliked AU of mine where Risha doesn’t accept Emeldir’s proposal and instead marries Count Rineld of Political Alliance Purposes.

_Risha sighed. “We were never going to unseat the king without a fight. I’d just hoped we’d get to pick the time and place. Needless to say the Count’s got his hands full just staying alive. But even with all that’s happening he still wants to marry me.” She either scoffed or laughed, she couldn’t tell which. Emeldir inclined his head for her to continue. “I can’t keep putting him off. Any advice on how to play this Emeldir?”_

“Just don’t forget about me, yeah.” Keeping her voice steady was proving to be a study in self control and idly she played with the collar of Emeldir’s jacket, flipping it up and down until finally just settling her hands on his chest. Beneath her hands beat the heart of the one who had so willingly, so foolishly given it fully over to her, just so she could turn around and throw it on the floor. “If anyone starts complimenting the  _Phoenix_ you better tell them I was your engineer.”

_Emeldir was silent for several seconds, chewing on his lip with his eyes on the ground before he glanced back up at her with an odd look in his eyes, tilting his head to the side. “I mean, you don’t have to marry the count. You could stay here…with me.”_

_Risha started, taking a step back. “What? I asked you for advice not…” She trailed off, eyes narrowing suspiciously even as her voice softened against her will. To stay there with him.. “Do you really mean that?”_

“I could never forget about you.” Emeldir breathed. Everything he said had been spoken in harsh tones tonight, as if he couldn’t, no, wouldn’t bring attention to what they were leaving behind. “I  _will_ never forget you. And you’ll always have a place on the  _Phoenix_.” 

_“Risha,” His voice was soft, never pleading, but she still looked back at him.  “My offer still stands. I mean, he’s rich, questionably handsome and popular. But I’m…me.” His voice fell flat and he held her look for several seconds. When she broke it to  look back at the Count his shoulders dropped._

His offer was so tempting…oh so tempting. If she looked too long into his eyes, clouded to a stormy slate grey with shielded misery and hurt, then maybe she would turn back, renounce her betrothal to Rineld and fall back into her smuggler’s orbit.

But Emeldir Deryn was bringing change to the Republic, and she was wrestling change for Dubrillion. Neither of their paths could stop, if they could it would only tangle them together beyond repair or completion. If this was what she had to do to assure that her claim to Dubrillion came to pass then so be it. Her captain could move on, wouldn’t need to walk the line of danger that came with a planetary civil war.

Or at least that’s what she told herself, biting her lip hard as her fingers pulled at the synthleather lapels of Emeldir’s jacket, tugging their lips together one last time. Against them, in the space shared by only the two of them, she murmured:

“And I will never forget you, Emeldir.” 

She began to pull away, glancing around to make sure no one had seen her moment of weakness. Without warning Emeldir reached for her again, tugging her back and catching her in a deep kiss brimming with everything he couldn’t, no, wouldn’t–damn him and his insistence on not pressuring her to stay, on keeping his distance even though she could see it was killing him on the inside–say. Against her better judgement she sank into it, pushing her fingers through his hair, newly cut short on the sides, the only outward change she could see every since the Deep Core Coalition’s senatorial election. 

Slightly breathless, feet leaden she forced herself to pull and turn away from him, tossing over her shoulder: “Best of luck to you, Senator Deryn.” 

 _“I’ll be heading for Coruscant, if you want to leave now’s the time.” Risha had purposefully been avoiding him ever since she had accepted Rineld, doing anything and everything she could around the_ Phoenix  _to avoid crossing his path._

 _“I wanted to talk to you. It didn’t seem right with all the crew around.” Risha shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I want you to know that…what we had…I wish things could stay the same, but with the way Dubrillion is..we just can’t keep doing what we’re doing_.” 

_Emeldir winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t–” He sighed, dropping his head. His hair fell in front of his eyes, obscuring his expression from her but she saw the way his shoulders tightened. “I’ve been called to the Coruscant representative election. The Supreme Chancellor put my name forward after clearing it with me. If things go as predicted…I won’t be needing my crew anymore. The others have already left.”_

_“I–Deryn…I’m..” She couldn’t find the words, fumbling around still when he looked up at her._

_It felt like a knife was jammed between her ribs when he nodded towards the airlock, stuffing his arms across his chest. “I need to fly out soon. It’s been a pleasure working with you, Risha.”_

She turned a second too late, caught his expression splinter. When he spoke his achingly familiar accent was steady, lacking the surging emotion they had just shared. “And the best of luck to you, queen Drayen.” 


	11. Rielay and Esrin: “I’m not leaving.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rielay and Esrin run into a predicament on a joint mission on Illum

They were in a predicament. 

Now, that was an uncommon thing to find oneself in when engaging on any sort of mission with Rielay, predicaments were part of the fun. 

Frankly this was one predicament the smuggler may have found herself enjoying–pressed against Esrin’s chest as she was–were it not for the biting cold and the line between “just tough enough to be fun” and “dangerous” blurring more with each passing second. 

Rielay and Esrin were on Illum alongside Emeldir and Risha, answering a call to aid against the Empire’s mounting attack. For Emeldir it was a job, probably part of his whole hero shtick he was running. For Esrin the Republic military had called him in without choice for the first time since Corellia. 

Rielay herself tagged along, of course, for the snow and feeling like her nose was going to fall off her face because clearly she  _hadn’t_  had her fill of those things on her jobs to Hoth. But she was an extra hand, an extra set of blasters. And the same Republic bosses who had called on Emeldir had sent a, decidedly more reluctant, request for her as well. Something about wanting both amazing halves of their smuggler saviors to save the day once again. 

Or, that’s what it should have said, she didn’t read it.  

There was nothing hard about the job–it was all shuffling around in the snow shooting at Imps and disabling their tech–until now.  _Now_  there was a problem. 

She and Esrin were given a different mission objective than Emeldir and Risha–they were to blaze their way into a storage holdout for Imperial supplies and cut them off at their source. Easy enough, until it wasn’t. 

As it turns out, fighting in a cave made predominantly of ice and snow using blasters filled with smoldering plasma bolts worked a  _little less_  than it would anywhere else. 

“Take out the big droid, take it  _out!”_ Rielay shouted, hunching down into herself as the crystal growth her back was pressed against exploded into sharps just to her left. She winced as some of the flyaway shards caught her cheek, ripping through the cloth covering the lower half of her face. Rolling to the other side of the crystal she fired several shots at one of the stars-damned droids, dropping it in a shower of sparks. 

The heavy thump of Esrin’s blaster canon firing off muffled her words, stalling the largest droid’s movements but not stopping it. Whatever the Imps built their droids out of was too fucking strong. “It’s not budging–” There was the whine of the droid’s gears and Esrin’s tone shifted, his body automatically moving towards her. “Rielay,  _move!”_

She didn’t question it, throwing herself out from behind her cover and sliding across the slick floor towards the opposite side of the cave. She threw an arm over her head as the droid’s turrets roared to life, yelping in shock when she nearly crashed into Esrin. One of his arms caught her around the waist, the other shielding her head as he hunched over her, shielding her with his bulk as the floor started to shake dangerously. 

An earsplitting crack and suddenly snow was all around them, bits of ice glancing off her coat and back. The whole room began to tremble, throwing them around and without warning they were falling. 

Rielay’s pained shout as her right arm twisted under her was lost in the noise, the breath knocked out of her lungs as, despite his attempt to twist out of the way, part of Esrin’s body weight still landed on her. Despite the ache spreading from her fingers up through her shoulder she didn’t move, still shielded under Esrin as the aftershocks faded.

“Esrin!” She squirmed around in his grip until she could look at him, a gloved hand clinging to the straps of his armor. “What knocked us down? You weren’t hit by the falling ice were you?” her hand not clutched close–her cybernetic arm, she couldn’t move the fingers any longer and she hoped desperately that they were just frozen from the cold–scrabbled across the plaistoid, looking for any damage. 

“I’m fine, it just glanced off and knocked me off balance. All this packed down snow is slippery.” Esrin’s hands caught her attention by settling on either side of her face, forcing her to look at him and cutting off her panic. “ _Rielay_ , a small piece just glanced off.” His eyes–ever watchful when they fought together–zeroed in on the way her other arm hung close to her chest, widening behind his snow goggles. “Rie…” 

Taking the first deep breath since the ice had started falling and flinching as the nerve sensors in the tech fired off Rielay struggled to a seated position and shook her head against the concern. Out of the corner of her good eye she saw the broken bodies of the droids under a pile of ice. “I landed funny on it when the ice came down, that’s all.” She looked around the cave, at the splintered ice where the roof had caved, at the mass of ice, rock, and snow that blocked their way out. “We need to find a way out.” 

Esrin rolled to his feet, following her eyes upwards just as warily, making his way over to the wall of debris that trapped them. He ran his hand along it, searching for…something. She dug around in her pocket for her holocomm, setting it on the snow and sending out a signal. It hovered, neither connecting or disconnecting. “I might be able to get a distress signal out.”

“Rie,” She missed him the first time, too busy tapping and fretting with the holocomm until it gave one pathetic ring. In the split second the connection lasted she punched out a distress signal, pinging their location. 

“Hopefully that will reach the base camp or some patrol around here, otherwise it’s going to be a  _long_ few hours until they realize we’re gone.” 

“ _Rie_. Come here.” 

“What–?” Standing she stumbled over to where Esrin was, standing by a hole in the debris between two chunks of ice, not much above his head. It was maybe a little bit larger than she was around and she could see the stars and the aurora borealis of the sky shining through. 

It was cold–the chill bit through her jacket and gloves now that they weren’t fighting, her wedding ring on it’s chain around her neck felt like it was burning a cold hole below her collar bones. But the air dropped another few degrees as she realized his idea just before he voiced it. 

“If I lift you up you might be able to squeeze through there. The way post is only a klick from here and maybe our speeder is still behind those banks.” 

“Absolutely not.” He looked down at her, surprised at the bite in her voice. “I am  _not_ leaving.” 

Her husband looked between her and the escape, the roots of exasperation written in the lines of his posture. “There’s no guarantee that our holo signal went through, but if you can get out then you can find  _help_. The base will have the sort of equipment to remove this.” 

Shaking from more than just the cold–tremors wracking up and down her arms and chattering her teeth she shook her head vehemently. “And if this thing caves while I’m gone? If it gives?” 

He had to understand, he had to see the building caving on Corellia, had to see the ash and dust rising as she had, had to see why she needed to stay. 

She may not be able to hold up the entire cave but she could damn well try. 

If he saw the root of her fear–the fear that had to be somewhere rooted in those memories of his–he didn’t react to it. His voice was slow, gentle in the way it always was when he was trying to talk her down into seeing reason. “We both have a better chance of getting out if you go and find help Rielay, stars knows I can’t fit through there and widening the space any isn’t going to happen.” 

Stomping on her fear and rolling it into a tightly coiled ball of frustration she ground out; “I’m  _not going_.” 

Esrin pushed out a huff of air that was as close to an exasperated sigh as he could muster–so he  _must_ understand where she was coming from. He opened his mouth to protest and she cut him off, yanking her scarf down around her neck. 

“Read my lips Esrin,  _I’m not leaving you_ and there’s nothing you can do to change by mind.” Gritting her teeth she watched as Esrin sighed, gently reaching down to pull the scarf back over her nose. 

“Alright.” 

Turning on her heel she stalked away to snatch the holocomm up, it’s blue light pulsing as it searched for signal. “I do have an idea.” Stopping by the hole she inspected it, then looked at Esrin with a sharp look. “If you lift me up I can maybe get a better signal. But I am  _not_  leaving the vicinity of this cave.” 

Already he was nodded along with her plan, crouching to let her scramble onto his shoulders. She locked her ankles across his chest, a warning in her voice. “Don’t even  _think_ about pushing me all the way through to get out.” 

“I won’t, and wouldn’t.” Esrin soothed, trying his best to keep her steady as she squeezed her upper body through the hole with her blind side unaided by the touch of her cybernetic arm. Bracing her elbow on the side of the debris–she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get out fully anyways, it was already a tight space around her–she flung her arm out as far as it would go and breathed a sigh of relief as the signal finally started going through. 

Pushing her luck she tested an actual call to the way point base, tapping her hand excitedly on the ground as it went through. “Captain Taqq, we read you’re location…” 

–

It took the Republic forces another two hours Rielay approximated to reach their location through the snow and clear the debris without collapsing the entire structure and another after that to reach the main base. 

The warmth–if it could even be called warmth, probably more accurately  _lesser cold_ –was welcome after the cold had sank deep into her bones even through her thermal-wear, turning her fingers to stone and her lips blue. 

Esrin, however, was incredibly warm without his armor and out of the chill as she snuggled back against his chest. Whether it was the twi’lek’s naturally higher core temperature or his larger and denser stature she didn’t know, but she was hardly complaining. 

On their shared cot (Esrin’s by definition but no one had questioned it when they had walked in together their first night here and from every night onward), nested in the blankets they could scrounge up, Rielay curled her knees closer to her chest , turning her head to rest in the crook between his neck and shoulder. His hands–rubbing warmth back into her arms, careful to avoid the sensitive and wrapped area where her cybernetic arm had been removed for repair–paused, his arms settling around her instead. 

“What’re you thinking about?” 

Rielay griped, “About how much this sucks. I thought Hoth was bad…I think I have frostbite in places I didn’t know could  _get_ frostbite.” 

While Esrin chuckled softly, pressing a tender kiss to the top of her head, he didn’t buy her gripe. “And what are you really thinking about?” 

Humming indecisively, Rielay tucked a sweater-pawed hand under her chin, curled tighter into herself. “About how dangerous these missions are.” When Esrin made a soft noise to cue her that he was listening, asking for more, really, she sighed. “On Hoth I was caught out in a storm and could’ve died, Emeldir was caught in the same storm and was nearly killed by whatever creature attacked him. Risha tells me they nearly froze to death when the White Maw dumped them in a chasm…then today…” 

A near silent whine escape her and she hid her face closer against Esrin’s neck, feeling his arms tighten around her. “I just keep thinking about how these things wouldn’t have phased me once but now…I don’t have the stomach for it anymore. For this game, hoping I don’t lose you or Emeldir or  _me_.” 

He was quiet for a moment, mulling over her words. “Are you…getting tired of the smuggling scene?” 

She shrugged, saying quietly, “I don’t know. I…don’t know. Today just…shook me.” 

“Alright,” Esrin didn’t push her further, giving her a comforting squeeze, though his question still hung between them. “Emeldir said that most of the fighting from here on out should be fairly straightforward–Imperial bases and such. No more caves in our future.” 

That brought a laugh from her, though it lacked it’s usual luster. “Good, I don’t want to see another cave for a long time. Every time I go in one it’s got somethin’ bad in it.” 


	12. Wren and Trix: “Is that what you’re doing? Trying to make me to hate you?”

“Wren!” Trix’s voice snapped across the tense air between them like a whip, snatching up Wren’s attention. The young sith paused in her furious explanation, her distress, self-directed anger, and frustration mixing her force signature into a quagmire. 

Trix had an idea of exactly why Wren was listing her shortcomings out like a list of grievances pinned to a door, why she kept returning to the same point over and over: that she was an unpredictable explosion waiting to happen, that she was broken. It wasn’t as if Wren hadn’t already told her the full story of Korriban after some encouragement in their courting process. 

Something had put it into her newly married wife’s head that there was something wrong with her again, and if it was any of the other high pureblood families again then Trix was going to have their heads. While both didn’t think much of their union there was the odd traditionalist that wailed over the mingling of pureblood and human bloodlines. 

Facing her, teeth set in a growl and eyes narrowed and brimming with tears, Wren looked cornered, like she didn’t know whether she was truly set on digging herself deeper into the hole she had set her feet in. When Trix closed the distance between them Wren started to pull back, ducking her head until her dark hair fell like a curtain between them, retreating, until Trix gently–but firmly–graped her chin to draw her head back up. “ _Vazuna_ ,” her voice was sharp. “Are you trying to make me hate you? Is that what you’re trying to do?” 

In the Force, swirling around them both, she could feel Wren shifting and raging like a Kaasi lightning storm. Her eyes glared at Trix, though there wasn’t any heat directed at her. One moment she was resolute and the next she wavered, her eyes shining in misery. She offered no answer, though her lower lip began to tremble. Trix, taking her answer where she found it, sighed and said in a softer tone: “If you are then  _try harder_.” 

“I don’t want to try harder.” Wren spat, though her eyes were brimming over, tears catching on her lashes. She thought that perhaps Wren would try to pull away, but instead she was struck by an intense surge of pure emotion in Wren’s signature and the younger woman kissed Trix roughly, quickly, before then pulling back. “I just hope you know what you’ve got yourself into.”

And then, in the silence it bought her, Wren retreated in full, storming off into another room in a swirl of red robes and dark hair with the slam of a door punctuating the air left between them. 


	13. Wren and A'trixa: “When I picture myself happy… It’s with you.”

Wren Thornley was a mystery. 

Not entirely, Trix knew the broad, sweeping details typed up on a form or spoken in idle conversation. 

She would be twenty-four this year, her parents were Ega and Aki Thornley, one a former Council Member and the other the former Wrath of the Emperor. She trained on Korriban until she was seventeen, and then she transferred back to work under private tutors on her home of Kaas City for…complicated reasons. 

Over the first few months, going on a year, of their marriage she had learned other things too. That she liked to wear soft, worn boots under her robes to the Citadel because she found heels uncomfortable. That at night, once she was well and truly asleep and relaxed, she snuggled into touch or would sometimes clutch a pillow tight to her chest. Or maybe, that she loved it when Trix ran her fingers through her hair, even if she was still shy about voicing any other little pleasures. 

And that was alright. Their marriage was a bond of families, it was a mutual agreement to enter. She would demand nothing of Wren, and they would grow closer if they wanted to. 

But she couldn’t read her thoughts yet, couldn’t pick her apart as she could with others. Even longer after the chaotic presence now situated in the back of her awareness had become familiar the inner thoughts of her wife were still lost on her. 

It came as some surprise when Wren didn’t immediately slip away to fall away from the heels and dress she wore to their at least weekly social event to keep up appearances. She had yet to fully adjust to the long hours of small talk and barbed comments, though she had a natural knack for it. She wouldn’t be a Dark Councilor without that touch of eloquence. 

Tired after the long evening, she’d usually disappear with a soft ‘good night’ and Trix would go upstairs later to find her already asleep, makeup and intricate hairstyles stripped away to leave her looking her most peaceful.

Tonight she retreated to the balcony, leaning on the edge like she was lost in thought. 

Trix leaned against the door frame, the muggy air washing over her. A light drizzle was still sprinkling outside, though the overhang above them shielded well enough from the majority of the rain. “Something on your mind?”

“Actually, yes.” Wren twisted to face her, holding her hands out and beckoning her over the threshold of the balcony, though her face remained contemplative. “I’ve been thinking lately.” 

“Oh?” Keeping her voice carefully neutral despite the plummet the words ‘ _I’ve been thinking’_  caused her heart to do, Trix followed Wren’s summons and covered the short distance between them. Wren intertwined their hands, pulling her back to the balcony’s edge. When she leaned against it she let their entwined hands swing back and forth, the glint of their rings catching in the evening lights. 

“I’ve always said that this partnership is something I want, I’ve known that since first meeting you.” Wren had her eyes fixed on their hands, pulling her lower lip between her teeth on the pause. 

Loathe as she was to admit it, Trix waited for the “ _But…”_ to drop, though no part of her except the little, paranoid voice in the back of her head would expect Wren to do that. That little voice fretted, pulling anything from the gossip it would bring for the only daughter of the Ethril line’s marriage to have broken so soon–an already questioned unity among the highest of purebloods in Kaasian society–to all the little bumps in the road as they had adjusted to living with each other. 

Then, Wren stopped worrying her lower lip and she looked up at Trix from under long, dark lashes. Her eyes, impossibly green and demanding her full focus from beneath dark liner, were bright. “I’ve realized something.” Her presence in the Force brushed closer to hers, warm and inviting even in its crackling energy. “I’m happy with you. Well and truly  _happy_. And..” With a blush pinkening her cheeks, darkening the sparse peppering of freckles across her nose, she let her eyes drop to their hands. “yeah..that’s what I’ve been thinking about.” 

Trix smiled then, her free hand wrapping under Wren’s jaw, drawing her chin up. Those intense eyes fixed on her again, softening as she smiled and drifting closed when Trix pressed a kiss to her lips. “Nothing makes me happier than hearing that.”

Wren giggled, shifting closer as Trix released her hand, snaking her fingers hair and kissing her again. Her presence twisted around Trix’s, twining them together. When she pulled away, just their foreheads touching, she murmured. “I have no regrets with you,  _vazuna_.” 

“No regrets.” Wren agreed, before murmuring. “ _Vazuna?”_

Her pronunciation was all off, all Imperial Basic and no High Sith and Trix grinned, dipping her head down to muffle her laugh in the crook between Wren’s neck and shoulder. “ _Vazuna_.” She enunciated, voice catching naturally on the deep, guttural sound of her language. “An endearment; my love, my heart. Indescribable in basic.  _Vazuna_.”


	14. Rielay and Esrin: “My parents asked about you.”

“Your parents are going to hate me.” Rielay leaned her palms back onto the cool surface of the counter top she was perched on and made a face. “They’re definitely going to hate me.” 

“They aren’t going to hate you.” Esrin leaned his forearms on the counter so they could be eye-level. “They asked about you, to  _meet_  you.” He clarified when she started to ask exactly  _what_  they had been asking about her. There were a lot of unsavory things that could be asked about a smuggler (well most smugglers except for Deryn, he was the one exception with a squeaky clean record with the Republic wrapped around his pinky finger. She, however, was not Emeldir Deryn.).

“And what do they think about their soldier son running around with a ruffian.” Rielay pressed, only half joking. Her reputation was no secret, her name known in a lot of different circles. The last thing she wanted was for Esrin’s parents to turn their nose up at her because of her steps over the line of legality. Her entire career based off of _il_ legality. 

She could act as unshakable as she wanted to like it wouldn’t matter because what are peoples opinions worth anyways… but that kind of disapproval was something she’d like to avoid knowing about. It could be there sure, just not where she could see it. The idea that Esrin’s parents would dislike her was a little bit more than she’d like to investigate. 

 “They don’t care, Rie, they really don’t.” He ran a finger over the back of her hand, tracing random patterns contemplatively. “Besides, I thought you wanted to see Sirixa.” 

 _Oh_  “That’s a low shot.” Rielay grumbled, glowering at the floor. “Of course I want to see that little kitten again.” 

“I didn’t mean it as a shot.” Esrin corrected with a small sigh. She knows she’s being difficult but the idea of introducing herself, the idea of facing inquisitive eyes puts a crushing weight across her chest and she shies away from it on principle and instinct.  “We don’t have to if it’s really making you uncomfortable.”

Then her own stubborn need to not be be such a  _kriffin_  coward–hadn’t they come too far for her to freeze at the thought of meeting his parents? What was she, a teenager in her first relationship?–kicks in and she gives a vehement shake of her head, hopping down from the counter so she can march to the bridge. 

(That’s definitely not the reason the idea strangles her and it’s probably not cowardice and  _maybe_ if for once she could just speak her mind like she doesn’t have an issue doing any other time they could have avoided this whole awkward stumbling around. Maybe he could figure out what was going on in her mind far faster than she could. Oh for…fuck it, she wants to see Sirixa again.)

Esrin followed her all the way to the bridge until she smacked her hands down on the navcomputer and gestured towards it. 

“We’re going. Coordinates?”

“Rie…” He tried again, reading the tension in her shoulders, the worry in her eyes all wrong. It’s not him or his situation it’s her, and her situation. But how to put that into words…it didn’t matter. She waved his concern away, letting her hands fall on the navcomputer again. 

“Coordinates, or else we’re going to fly in circles until I run out of fuel or find your parents’ place.”

With a sigh Esrin rattled off the coordinates and then came to stand beside her as she manned the controls–a stress habit, even though the autopilot on this ship has yet to kill her or take her off course–and rested a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t know whether to thank you for agreeing to meet them or tell you you’re too stubborn and you really don’t have to do this.” 

“Both,” Rielay lifted one of her hands to rest over Esrin’s, offering him her best muster of a mischievous smile. “One, it’s about time I drop by and say hello, and two, I want to see that trouble maker Sirixa again.” 

“She’ll be thrilled to see you.” There was a bit of affectionate laughter hiding in his voice and when she looked up again he had a soft smile across his face. “She still has that horned hopper stuffy from Balmorra, you know.” 

That softened Rielay’s smile too, widening it and smoothing away the mischief. “No kidding, really? Stars, I’m surprised that thing is still around.” 

“Well, my mum’s had to stitch it together again a few times in secret before Siri found out it had a hole in it’s shoulder, but I think so.” Esrin chuckled. “I bet she’ll be happy to see her hero again.”

It took Rielay a three count to realize that that meant her. And when it clicked, she ducked her head and pressed her lips back against a larger grin at the thought. Maybe this trip wouldn’t be to bad after all. 


	15. Wren and A'trixa: “Why are you limping?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning for some soft angst

It was a peaceful morning over Kaas City, without any heavy rumbles of thunder to shake the windows or the pounding of rain on the roof. Even a small sliver of watery light filtered through the curtains when Trix’s eyes blinked open. 

In the circle of her arms, Wren shifted, a soft breath falling from her lips in a sigh that brushed across Trix’s collar bone. An equally as gentle, languid kiss was pressed where the sigh had brushed before bleary green eyes, framed by sleep-heavy lashes shifted up to meet hers. “Good morning, love.” 

“You don’t need to be at the Citadel,  _vazuna_?” Trix cut her eyes over to the  chrono, blue lit numbers reading back a time that Wren where Wren usually would have been at the citadel. Thick black hair, roped into a loose and falling apart braid brushed tickled Trix’s shoulder as Wren shook her head. 

“No meeting today, just us.” 

“Just us, huh?” Languidly Trix stretched and shifted to kiss Wren slowly, savoring the way that Wren leaned into her, smiling against her lips until Trix stole them again. With the ease of two people that knew they had a lot of time they simply enjoyed the peace. Their connection was still, like a lake still enough to act as a mirror. Wren’s hair fell like a curtain around them as the braid fell to pieces under Trix’s hands, quiet laughter passing between them when she goes to tuck it behind Wren’s ears, long nails grazing across her cheek. 

In the span of a breath those half lidded eyes go unfocused, Wren pulling away, letting her forehead rest against Trix’s. She can feel Wren’s brows draw together. “ _Vazuna_ …?” She lets the question hang, hands drifting from their nest in Wren’s hair, one cupping her cheek and the other to her shoulder. 

“The  _Minerve_ …Corellia to Belsavis..” Murmured softly enough that she almost didn’t catch it, Trix starts to pull away to look Wren in the eyes, concern starting to coil in her mind but before she can move far Wren pressed another kiss to her lips, gentle and slow. “Sorry love, something from yesterday’s reports just hit me.” 

They stay together, intertwined in each other’s arms for some time, but something was gnawing at Wren, going unrevealed no matter how much Trix questioned. Mind-drifting, unfocused eyed distraction was unlike her, but she couldn’t read anything through the bond they shared. It remained peacefully still, settling in the conscious part of Trix’s mind where she could always feel it. 

Eventually Wren untangled herself, moving to the edge of the bed and running a hand through her hair. It cascaded down her back and even through the thick curtain of black waves she caught the near imperceptible wince when Wren lifted her hands above her head, leaning one way then another to stretch. 

“Wren,” Trix’s voice dropped, insistent and concerned. “Are you alright?” 

Glancing over her shoulder, Wren offered a small, soothing smile. “I’m alright, I think I just slept wrong.” Pushing herself up and walking over to the closet, snatching a silky dressing gown off the door and slipping it over her arms, Wren continued. “Something’s bothering me about those reports…” 

She trailed off when Trix meets her halfway to the door with hands on her shoulders, browstalks drawn together in concern. One long nailed finger slipped under her chin, eyes scanning her face for…something. She wasn’t sure what she’s looking for, all she found was normally pale skin, and slightly fuzzy eyes narrowing up at her. “If you are alright, why are you limping?” Her hand slid to Wren’s hip, yanking away like she had touched a hot iron pan when she flinched. “Wren–”

Whatever warning was in her voice dropped away when between one blink and the next the calm lake of their bonds roars to life, pouring between them with such a cacophony of emotion–pain, fear, fury,  _agony_ –that it nearly buckled her knees and she stumbled. Wren’s hands were on her upper arms, nails digging sharply into her skin and when she snapped her worried eyes back to her she nearly cries out. 

Between one blink–no, not even, one  _millisecond_ – Wren’s image seemed to distort, hair that had been sleep mused instead writhing around her shoulders and face in tangles, eyes that had been hooded by morning drowsiness blown wide and rimmed in red, sunken with dark circles. 

With a wordless cry, Trix grabbed at Wren, the relentless hammering of her presence receding like the tide, roiling back to reveal that still lake until even that starts to drain. But grasping at Wren did nothing, the tight grip of her fingers fading on her arms, the bite of her nails releasing as she became first intangible and then vanished to smoke entirely, leaving only the last distorted image of her haunted eyes burned into Trix…

“ _Vazuna?!”_ Their room was dark, a peal of thunder rattling through the window pains as Trix surges up, blankets tangled around her legs. Scrambling for the bedside light, filling the room with a soft yellow glow against the inky night, Trix looked to the other side of the bed. 

The blankets are mused from what must have been her thrashing, but otherwise it is empty. Just as the corner of Trix’s mind was that was usually filled with a humming, chaotic presence. Now, now it’s bone dry, silent in a way that Trix hadn’t had to live with for years. Hollow. 

Wren was gone. To where, why, what..she didn’t know. Gone. The breaking of the dam tempering their force bond that had left Trix crumpled on the floor of her office, fingers gripping the edge of her desk, the only message sent before that hollow knoll was carved out of her mind. 

Breathing ragged, Trix brought a hand to her forehead, pushing back hair tangled with sweat. A sting her her upper arm caught her scattered attention and she pushed up her sleeve, eyes widening at the dark, crescent indentions puckering her skin, already starting to fade. 

“Oh, Wren,” Trix ran her fingers over the marks, pulling at the fraying threads of her dream. It would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it? For a search that had been all but futile so far to be aided by her dreamscape? 

But she remembered clearly those terrified green eyes staring into her, eyes that had no business being terrified as long as she lived, those elegant hands gripping into her arms like she hadn’t wanted to let go. 

What was it…? The name hit her and she scrambled for the datapad on her bedside table, pushing past unread messages from Ega Thornley, terrified for her daughter, and instead jumping to the address of her hired team of slicers and other hunters. 

Her fingers flew over the screen, the text blinking, blinking, blinking, before firing off to catch up with her rapid typing and then skittering as she hit send. 

 _The Minerve, I want any information you can get on it_. 

Dragging her eyes to the chrono at the top of the screen, a pained sigh rounding her shoulders when it read only a few hours after she had closed her eyes initially. Clicking the screen to black and setting the datapad aside, Trix turned off the light and leaned back against her pillows. She pressed her palms into her forehead, kneading lightly before letting them drop her lap and pressing her head back against the headboard. In vain she reached out into the oblivion to try and find Wren’s light again, turning up nothing except an angry, keening noise from her own throat that made her acutely aware of her singularity in the room, and the empty space around her. 

In the dark metal of a boxy room, lit only by a spluttering ceiling light and the red glow of the plasma wall separating cell from room Wren crumbled to the floor from her knees, limbs convulsing from the punishment of the force inhibiting collar strung tightly around her neck, last tendrils of the Force snapping back around her like a faltering shield. 


	16. Emeldir and Risha: “I can’t believe we’re snowed in..”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This takes place probably somewhere between the end of the smuggler story and the beginning of Makeb+SoR

For most couples, a day dedicated appreciating a significant other such as today might be spent somewhere nice, doing something romantic. Alderaan came to mind, or even someplace like Coruscant. 

This was not Alderaan or Coruscant, by any stretch of the imagination. 

“I can’t believe we’re snowed in.” Emeldir let himself fall back into the cushions of the couch, narrowly avoiding Risha’s legs. She pulled her legs up to her chest at the last second, yanking her blanket out from under him. 

“Of course we’re snowed in, this is  _Hoth_.” She snapped, though it was without venom–mostly. “Since when have we ever had any luck here?” 

It was just the two of them aboard the  _Phoenix_ , making what was supposed to be a low profile supply drop to the Republic forces stationed here, easy credits with minimal hassle. Or so it had said in the mission description he had been sent. Nowhere in that description did it mention the snow squalls that had swept in, keeping the  _Phoenix_  grounded unless they wanted to test the ship’s armor out against the icy cliffs all around them. 

Their crew was safely–and probably warm, Emeldir noted with an irritated grumble–dropped off at the Republic Fleet to go their separate ways for a month or two leave between major jobs; the types of multi-personnel missions that required everyone to keep things running smooth, these in-between jobs he and Risha could handle on their own. This drop on Hoth was supposed to be a small detour, a day’s grounding at most before they took their two months off back at their apartment on Coruscant. 

That went about as well as he should have expected. Risha wasn’t wrong, things on Hoth tended to go poorly. It had been a theme ever since his first time here with Captain Taqq, where he had earned the scars across his face from a very unfriendly wild animal. Nevertheless, he kept his voice light, “Aw, c’mon Rish, it isn’t that bad.” 

She scoffed, rolling her eyes at his grin. “Yeah right, spending two days stranded on your freezing ship doesn’t make my top ten list of places to be.” 

“ _Our_ ship.” Emeldir corrected good naturedly. “Your name is with mine on the papers, after all.” 

Risha narrowed her eyes at him. “If it was  _my_ ship we wouldn’t be freezing our asses off.” 

Emeldir opened his mouth to reply, closed it, frowned, and conceded to that point. “You have a point,  _but_  the officials said we aren't’ allowed to keep the  _Phoenix_  running in the hangar and they won’t let us leave.” 

As if on cue his holocom beeped…all the way from the bridge where he had left it. Emeldir’s shoulders slumped, and he looked over his shoulder towards the bridge balefully. Risha’s foot poked his side, her voice dripping false innocence. 

“You going to go get that, Deryn?” 

Pulling himself back off the couch was a chore, the trek to find his chiming holocom arduous with the nip in the air of his ship. Once answered and hung up after only a few quickly exchanged sentences he leaned against the archway into the bridge, repeatedly bumping his forehead against the metal wall. 

“Let me guess…” Risha’s voice was dry at Tatooine sand, bitingly sarcastic. “They’re going to let us off this snowball.” 

“You guessed it,” Emeldir answered in kind before pushing off the wall and plodding over to where he had left his jacket; thick fabric made heavy with down filling that made him feel like an idiot walking around in with the lack of motion it gave him. “

As he shrugged it back on Risha made to stand. “Want me to go with you?” 

“No, they just want to double check our clearance papers and documents before letting us off planet when the snow clears up…for the hundredth time.” He rolled his eyes. “As if we’ve somehow become illegal in the past twenty-four hours.” 

“Well make sure that between here and your meeting you don’t suddenly commit any crimes or end the registration on this ship.” Risha wrapped her blanket back around her shoulders, deadpanning. “They might just have to arrest you.” 

“Their prison would probably be warmer than in here.” Emeldir returned with a grin, dodging one of the smaller couch cushions being thrown his way. 

His laughter and her exasperated sigh followed him out the airlock and down the ramp as he braved the frosty Hoth air, freezing even in the sealed hangars and hallways of the Republic base. 

By the time he returned his eyes were watering with the cold, his nose was just about frozen and he was very tempted to throw the nearest Republic official into the snow drifts outside. 

“We’re grounded for another day at  _least_.” He called, toeing his boots off and peeling off his gloves, pulling his jacket off as he walked. 

Risha had acquired more blankets, pulling the comforter off of the bed in their quarters and was curled up in it, datapad in hand. She rolled her eyes, giving a frustrated growl. “Of  _course_ we are. Why?” 

Emeldir cleared his throat and let his voice drop into an exaggeratedly deep impression of the officer he had spoken to, “Well, Captain, you won’t be able to fly until our own ships are sanctioned to fly. We’ll keep you updated.” He let his voice go back to normal, his accent returning with vengeance alongside his indignity. “ _We_ have to wait for the Republic ships to be able to fly? I’ve flown in worse conditions than this, I’m  _known_ for flying in worse conditions than this.” 

“Why do we have to wait for Republic clearance?” Risha griped. “We aren’t directly employed by the Republic military, they can’t order us to stay.” She scrunched up her nose, tilting her head to the side. “Think we could blast a hole through the hangar doors?” 

“Rish, no.” Emeldir flopped down next to her again, running a hand through his hair with a grimace and a huff. The cold was getting very old very fast and it wasn’t doing any favors for his bad leg. But…there couldn’t be no positives of being marooned in his ship with Risha. “There is a positive side.” 

Risha glanced over, an eyebrow quirking up. “Really?” 

“It is still Valentines Day…and we’re still together…we can still binge cheesy holovids.” 

Her eyebrow rose a little further, though a smile was pulling at the corners of her mouth, “I really hate holidays with you sometimes.” 

He slipped an arm around her shoulders, his smile turning mischievous. “Me, you, some cheesy holovids isn’t  _that bad_. If we combine our body heat we might even be warm.” 

Risha looked down at his arm around her shoulders, narrowing her eyes. “Deryn don’t you–” He warning cut off in a muffled yelp as he wrapped his other arm around her and pulled her close, accidentally overbalancing them both and nearly sending them off the edge of the couch. 

“Ffff _uck,_ Deryn you’re freezing!” 

He laughed, burying his face at the point between her neck and shoulder. “Yeah but you’re  _warm.”_

Risha squirmed out from his arms, shoving a blanket in his face. “Not for long if you keep leeching it.” 

He batted the blanket away, lower lip jutting out in a pout, complete with puppy eyes. “Risha..” 

She rolled her eyes at him. “Stop being so dramatic.” Pulling the remaining blankets to her she schooched back and patted the couch. “Feet here.” He obliged, watching with amusement as she spread the blanket out so that it spread out over the back of the couch, over her head and down to the floor for the few seconds before she nestled herself between the back of the couch and Emeldir and pulled the blanket down over the both of them. 

“Comfortable?” He grinned, adjusting his arm so that it was around her shoulders. 

“Mmm…” Risha thought for a moment before letting her head rest back on his shoulder. “Yeah. Think we can get through the whole collection of cheesy romance movies before we fly?” 

“I don’t know, but challenge accepted.” 


	17. Emeldir and Risha: The way you said “I love you”: In a way I can’t return

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emeldir/Risha (male smuggler/Risha Drayen) 
> 
> A KOTFE Outlander Risha AU

Emeldir can still see the smoke in the distance even all the way back at the  _Phoenix_. Too controlled he gets off his speeder, a seconds pause, a moment’s breath before he wheels around and slams his hand down onto the metal. A wordless cry, half of pain half of frustration as he stares unseeingly down at his hand, splayed across the metal. 

Three years, countless leads, failure after failure. A crew completely disbanded, a fellow captain trying to convince him that it wasn’t working anymore. 

It  _wasn’t_  working anymore, another dud lead, an anonymous tip ending in a meeting place that was just ash drifting in the wind when he arrived. The only thing keeping him going is the knowledge that if she was really…dead–even in his thoughts the word cuts him like a knife–then someone wouldn’t be going through the trouble to continue eliminating his contacts. It’s barely enough, it’s starting to not be enough, not after so long with nothing but his own memories and drive to keep him company.

 His wordless cry died to a painful; “Where are you?” Fingers curling into fists he looked accusingly to the sky, where grey smoke still twined through the air. Low anger snapped, exploded and he pushed himself away from the speeder again to face the sky fully again. “ _Where_ are  _you_?” 

The sky gave no answers, but he shouted for them anyway. The sky was passive, silent as his voice was driven to a gravelly exhaustion, angry stone-cold eyes broken down to glistening, dull shadows of themselves.

 All energy gone before he can even make it back into his ship he just sank  down onto the ramp, burying his face in his hands. “Why’d you have to leave me?” His voice shatters, breath shaky. “I  _love_ you, I love you and I just want to be with you again.” If only she had him go with her. If only he could have been with her when the flames had gone up. 

Anything, even death, would have been better than the hole in his chest, than the knowledge that she was out there  _somewhere_  and he was just too blind to find her. She could be trapped, hurt, waiting for her family to help her as they always did for each other and he would be failing. 

He had been failing, was continuing to fail. “Come back,  _please_.” 

–

The voices of hundreds were screaming at Risha that it’s her fault, that she could have stopped the terror and misery that wail all around them. 

Coruscant burned in muted saturation except for the flames licking at buildings and their ruins, the crimson of blood as injured are run by and the bright orange of the embers swirling around her. Buildings collapse in pillars of smoke and dust, the Senate Tower burned bright in front of her. 

It couldn’t be real. 

One voice stood out from the rest, achingly familiar and she wildly cast around for the familiar face attached to that lilt. When Emeldir stepped out from the crowd clamoring around her she inhales sharply, brows drawing together. He’s mere feet away from her, so family, but there were new scars across his face, he looked beaten down, older and  _worn_. In all the saturation his broken silver-blue eyes, burned into her memory so vividly except they’re no longer warm, they’re frozen cold, bore into hers.

This couldn’t be real.  

“Why would you do this, Risha?” But his voice sounded so real, everything about him seemed so real. Even the burning of Coruscant, if she looked up to the sky among all the smoke the silhouette of the fleet she had seen on Marr’s ship takes form, seemed to palpable to be imagination. When she covered the distance between her and Emeldir, reaching for him he  _feels_  real. 

His eyes broke further and he looked just as he did when she planned to leave after his proposal. Then, they soften and he reached for her too. His hand was warm on her cheek and she leaned into his touch. 

Between one moment and the next his eyes went wide, his knees buckling and mouth opening slightly in surprise. Bright crimson pooled at the corners and Risha cried out, arm trying to catch him as he slid to the ground. It morphs into a scream when she looked down, a blaster pistol held by her hand pressed against him where a red stain in spreading. She had never had it in her hand, she swore her hand had been empty but it’s unmistakably Emeldir’s and it’s her finger pressed against the trigger. 

She sank to the ground with him, eyes wide as his pained breaths rush in and out of her ears much to real for it to be a dream. 

It couldn’t be-

Emeldir’s hand locked around her wrist. “Why?” His eyes, fixed on hers still, are confused. “Why didn’t you come back? You promised…”

“I will, I will keep my promise, Emeldir just stay here with me.” Tears rushed down her cheeks when he faded, fading into the monotone except for the blood on his shirt, spattering her jacket. 

It’s too real, the pain in his voice raw in a way that she had only heard once before,  _everything_. It couldn’t be real though, it couldn’t. “Emeldir  _please_.” Her voice dropped, barely a whisper. “I love you.” 

Just behind her shoulder Valkorian laughed. “Everything crumbles my dear, even your carefully constructed love.” 

It was then she knew it was only her nightmares but as she dropped her forehead to Emeldir’s shoulder, fingers knotting in his shirt she couldn’t tell if the pain she felt was this, or the carbonite slowly rotting her away. 

The ash and smoke drift out of her senses. Between her fingers the feeling of Emeldir’s shirt becomes less and less tangible, falling through her fingers like sand. 

Valkorian’s laughter filled her ears and everything melted away. 


	18. Emeldir and Risha: “God, I was so worried!” “I was only gone for five minutes!”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A (now AU) KOTFE/ET adventure

The Alliance needed only one Commander to function. But without someone to be the figurehead…it would fall apart. 

Which meant that commanders Emeldir and Risha were regularly separated on missions. As the morale booster, the leader who was one with the people, Emeldir was constantly put out in the field, achieving the impossible and creating the heroic image that the Alliance members needed to see. 

As the tactical mind, the born and raised leader, Risha was left behind. And it drove her insane. Before the five years she and Emeldir had been inseparable, a fighting team that matched no other. Putting his life into the hands of people she didn’t know, of who she suspected didn’t really care about the people behind the titles became harder every time. As the odds became darker and darker and their missions became harder and harder she wanted nothing more than to be fighting there with him. 

The Alliance would fall without a commander. Emeldir could never be that sole commander, and it had been discussed between them at length. All those lives resting on his shoulders…already it threatened to push him too far down to get back up again. If she fell, leaving him alone, he’d break. 

This should have been a simple mission. Emeldir and Theron were on Zakuul, scouting for any potential information they could use against Arcann. It wasn’t supposed to end in a fight, it was supposed to be passive observation and reporting. Direct connection was established between Emeldir, Theron and Odessen, information being relayed in a steady stream. 

If there was one thing she should have known knowing and  _marrying_  the infamous Emeldir Deryn is that simple and smugglers never played nice. 

When his voice, constant throughout most of the mission as he quietly relayed what he and Theron were seeing undercover as civilians cut off abruptly into a crackle of static she froze. “Deryn?” Going quiet for a moment she tried to reconnect, raising nothing but more static. Her eyes narrowed. “Emeldir?” 

Nothing. The static eased into faint background noise, what sounded like indecipherable shouting and something suspiciously like blaster fire. Then as quickly as it returned the feed cut. Risha turned on her heel, facing the three advisers that looked just as confused as she had felt when Emeldir had first gone silent. “Someone get me a location on them, this wasn’t supposed to be a mission with fire.” Her voice was sharp until she sucked in a breath. “Are they armed?” 

If she were to guess both Theron and Emeldir were armed at least with one weapon each but neither of their undercover uniforms had offered much in the way of hiding weapons and from their intel walking around visibly armed was a cause for scrutiny. They hadn’t wanted scrutiny. 

“I don’t believe so, except for the most simple weapons they could carry without suspicion.” Lana growled in frustration, pushing away from the terminal she had been hunched over. “They’ve gone off the map.” 

Static still hummed at Risha’s back as she brought a hand up to her face, weaving through her thoughts. “…Someone get me a  _fucking_  connection with them. I want to know what’s going on.” 

“Commander?” Lana appeared at her shoulder, hand tentatively resting on her upper arm. “Are you alright? Your hands are shaking.” 

Risha immediately clenched her hands into fists, taking in a deep breath and letting it out slowly until her hands stilled and she could pull her mask down over herself again. 

Five years ago she had been stuck, passive on the  _Phoenix_  as Emeldir’s voice and the sounds of blaster fire had guided them through Darth Marr’s flagship. Static had torn through seconds before the ship went up in flames, the faintest hints of his voice still audible in harsh breaths and soft whispers. 

Now, she was trapped on Odessen, unable to do anything but watch and listen as that very same voice went under layers of static. She had lost him once before in the silence, what if it happened now? 

“I hate being powerless.” Risha said instead, eyes searching the holoterminal for any flicker that would reestablish their connection. 

Whether Lana caught the lie in her words or not she gave a slight nod. “I know.” 

–

Pacing a hole in the floor of the war room would do nothing but Risha still made her rounds back and forth, back and forth. Nothing, no re connection, no location  _nothing_. Complete silence. 

Activity had stilled around her, the patter of fingers on data pads quieting and barked orders hushing. Instead her advisers watch her, deciding that there’s nothing left to do but wait. 

She hated these waiting games. 

As best as she could she blinked away the flames of Marr’s flagship from behind her eyes. 

She had relived that enough in the past five years,she didn’t need it now. She was tempted to walk out, take a shuttle from the military hangar and go find them herself. 

The holoterminal gave a hesitant chime and Risha covered the ground to it in three strides, smacking the button that would accept the call. She hadn’t needed to look at the identification, she had just  _known_. 

“It’s about time you called, I was worried  _sick_.” She kept her voice snappish as a projection of Emeldir appeared, grainy and flickering. Her eyes though searched him, looking for injuries. A darker patch of blue trailing from his ear made her frown but any questioning was broke off in an entirely unamused laugh when Emeldir spoke; 

“I was only gone for five minutes.” 

He must know that that was bullshit or he wouldn’t be smiling, albeit it’s apologetic and doesn’t reach his eyes. She scowled, pushing any emotion other than irritation aside until later. “Three hours was a very long five minutes, Deryn.”

“Risha-” He must’ve read something in her expression, in her stance,  _something_ but she cut him off. 

“Later. Focus on getting home. In a timely manner, if you could.” 

Home. As if this unfamiliar planet was home with it’s half built infrastructure and strangers instead of Coruscant where they’re apartment had been comforting and uniquely  _them_. With that home gone, buried under the ashes of a once great capitol planet home was wherever they could fine. 

That just happened to be here. Surrounded by strangers who saw them as leaders, images,  _symbols_  over people. She shouldn’t have been as ruffled by it as she was, it wasn’t like the Republic hadn’t done a very similar thing. 

“Will do.” Emeldir offered another apologetic look before he disconnected the channel. Risha turned her back, leaning on the terminal and scrubbing a hand over her face. 

“See, everything ended up fine. They know what they’re doing.” Lana’s voice wasn’t mocking, on the contrary it was soothing and Risha let her hand drop back to her side with a sigh. 

“I know that they know what they’re doing. When it cut out though…” Her next sigh was irritated. “I know I shouldn’t have reacted so quickly.” 

When Emeldir stepped off his ship Risha was waiting with their advisers, any residue emotion pushed away for later discussion. All Commander again except for a quick embrace and a muffled “I’m sorry.” murmured for her ears only. She could only give a curt nod, fingertips ghosting over the cuts by his ear with a frown before business drew them back for a full report on the mission. 

The mission always had to come first. In theory, at the very least. 

 


	19. Emeldir and Risha: The way you said “I love you”: As a goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An angsty scene from my now obsolete and discontinued KOTFE AU fic Of Sun and Moon 
> 
> (I believe the first chapter is still up..yikes)

Marr had stopped working. Why had he stopped working?  

The sith lord’s expression was unreadable beneath the cold metal and he desperately wished he could find some sliver of the fear coursing through his own veins.  Anything in his eyes, his voice, his stance. But it was all hidden beneath heavy plated armor and voice modifiers. If he could hear, see, something then maybe he wouldn’t feel cornered and alone as he tried to will the ship back to life.

“ _Deryn.”_ Risha’s voice, barely understandable through the static that had fried through his earpiece connecting him to the  _Phoenix,_ was nervous. Maybe what she was seeing out in open air was just as bad as the ship crumbling around him. “ _You should get out of there_.” 

“There are basic back-up controls.” Marr rumbled, pausing to rest his hands on the edge of the control board. “But the enemy has us surrounded and our options are limited.” There it was, the quiet resignation in his voice. He felt his stomach plummet, though he had wished for a sign seconds ago the resignation could only mean one thing, Resignation in the voice of a Sith Lord that must’ve faced the impossible any number of times meant there was nothing. No chance. 

Something in Emeldir agreed, hooking it’s icy claw into his heart and dragging it down to his stomach.  _Fine_. “If we aren’t getting out of here then at least I can save as many other lives as possible.” One glance over his shoulder confirmed that the wreckage was still blocking their exit, too much to move, too much to dig through to find a safe passage through.  _Fine_. His hand hovered over the intercom button on the controls, no longer shaking but instead uncannily still. 

“ _Emeldir_.” Risha’s voice was more insistent this time, urgent. “ _If you’re receiving then please tell me.You need to get_ out _.”_

“I hear you, Risha.” Emeldir tapped his wrist link once to sync the audio feed again momentarily. Within seconds the connection cut out and he scowled before leaning his palm down on the intercom button. It echoed his voice around the ship in a husk of it’s real tone, emotionless and dull. 

“Everyone needs to make their way to the escape pods and evacuate. That is an order. Enemies are attacking and shields are failing-” He broke off, shoulders drooping as he let his hand fall away from the button. “Get off if you can.” He finished softly. 

With an enormous roar, metal siding crashed to the floor,ripping tubing and wiring down with it in flames. He looked over his shoulder to watch it hit the floor in a burst of ash and flame.  _Trapped_. His thoughts wailed.  _Hopeless_. 

 

“So be it.” Marr murmured, clasping his hands behind his back and standing tall, facing the collapsing interior of the ship like a stoic statue. The flames reflected red and gold off his mask, the destruction shown clearly as in a mirror.

“ _Get off that damn ship!”_  Behind Risha’s voice, Emeldir could hear the crackling line to Taqq’s ship and his fellow starship captain cursing and demands to know what the hell he thought he was doing. “ _It’s falling apart, find an escape pod or so help me-”_

It took a few tries but the audio feed sputtered back to life. “I know.” 

He wanted to cut the feed off, shut it away completely so that this–a cacophony of screeching metal and starship fire a backtrack to his voice–wouldn’t replace the goodbye’s they had said on the  _Phoenix_. 

(”I still don’t see why I can’t come with you.” Risha leaned against the frame of the ship, arms wrapped tightly around herself. She was wearing her armor, her blaster rifle slung over her shoulder. “You’ll need back up.” 

“One of us needs to make it back out of Wild Space.” Emeldir reminded her, looking away when he saw her flinch at the words. One of them had to make it back to supervise the investigation they were doing into Ziost. Someone had to make it out to speak about whatever happened out on Marr’s ship. “Plus I’ll need someone to be able to pilot the  _Phoenix_  out of here if there’s any trouble.”

“You have Corso.” She frowned, looking to the floor. “I don’t like you going out alone on an enemy ship. Please, at least take  _someone_.”)

The rush of air pushed back from another strip of metal plating that had collapsed raked it’s fingers through his hair as his hand hesitated by his ear, squeezing his eyes closed against the distinct shift he heard in Risha’s tone, even through the grainy quality.   
  


“ _What do you mean you_ know?  _Find an escape pod, launch it and we’ll come find you.”_ He heard her sharp intake of breath. “ _You’re not-no, we’ll get you out of there, we’ve piloted through worse.”_

He could hear her panic rising and he tried to force as much calm into his own voice as he could manage. “Rish,  _Rish_.” She quieted, small breath hitching over the connection. “It’s alright. You and the crew need to get away from here.”

The last moments of a Republic aligned smuggler failing to save an Imperial war vessel was not something his crew needed to stay for, it may be inevitable for him but they didn’t need to watch. He wanted them safe, away from the fire raining down on the flagship. 

“ _No, I’m not leaving you. That wasn’t our agreement.”_

 _(_ He rested his hand on her shoulder, wanting to draw her close but knowing that if he did they’d never want to let the other go. “Marr wanted me alone. It’s just for a briefing, planning, whatever you want to call it. I’ll be back before you know it.” 

“I’ll hold you to it.” She warned, bringing her hand up to rest over his, eyes lifted to hold his. “You’ll be back.”

He managed a small, crooked smile. “I always come back.”)

Or maybe he wanted to save himself by sending his crew away. Save himself from the pain of hearing Risha’s fear, maybe it was his own selfishness that had him wanting to shelter his family from the final moments of the Destroyer. 

“I promised you I’d be right behind you.” He flinched as behind him another chunk of siding struck the floor and rattled the entire ship. “I’m sorry.”

“ _Don’t apologize for anything until you’re back on the this ship because we’re coming to get you_.” Her voice broke audibly and he winced, pressing his lips together. 

Marr was silent, facing death as if it was an old friend. How, Emeldir couldn’t begin to know. “Corso knows what to do.” his voice dropped and he cleared his throat, trying to steady his breath as it picked up at the splintering noise spreading out around him, the acrid smoke choking his lungs. “Risha, I love you, okay?”

“ _I know but your going to tell me that again, and again until you make up for your stupid heroics.”_ A beat of silence and Emeldir thought the connection may have cut out again. But then her voice returned, choked. “I love you too.”

The signal cut out then, leaving only dull static in it’s wake. 

His hand paused by his ear, hesitating for a moment before he removed the earpiece and bowed his head, squeezing the small device in his fist until he felt the small pieces break. His eyes followed the broken bits as they tumbled to the floor from his palm. 

_So be it._

(Emeldir’s comlink beeps with the signal to board Marr’s ship and they break their embrace. Risha had stepped close to him, resting her ear above his heart and wrapping her arms tightly around him. Like she was just going to keep him there, trapped like that. He would have gladly stayed. 

“Stay safe, Deryn. And come back.” She took her hand in his to keep him from moving back towards the airlock. Her eyes searched his face, her frown returning. “It’s just this and then we’re going home.”

“Just this.” Emeldir promised. “We’ll be out of this game soon.” His comlink beeped more insistently and he sighed. “I’ll be back soon,” Pausing, he leaned down to kiss her gently. “I love you.” 

“I love you too. Don’t make this the last time.”)

 

The sudden roar of a hundred turrets firing at once thundered around them. It  snapped the flagship, it’s last groaning cry accompanied by the crack of it’s metal bones and the flames turning everything brilliant with white, red and gold even behind Emeldir’s tightly closed eyelids

.In the unexplored depths of Wild Space an Imperial warship splintered, bleeding flame. An indomitable fleet stood silent witness to it’s last struggling moments, the only ones to see it’s blazing death among the glittering stars.

Across the stars a starship captain flung her own headpiece hard enough against the wall hard enough to break, her own family rushing to her side. Furious, agonized screams go unmuffled, hits taken without flinching if only to block her from running into the fire. 

In the dying glow of the flames a lone freighter made the jump into hyperspace, wordless cries screaming across empty space as a woman was held back from the bridge by a wookie, the last vows between crew and captain carrying them further away. 

Eventually, the flames die out and leave only blackened scraps of metal behind. 


	20. Five and Thea & Era and Noa: Family and Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The agent family enjoys some Bloom Fest meals and fluff. Short and sweet courtesy of your local captainderyn forgetting how to write anything that isn’t Ashes.

The open, spacious apartment in Kaas City was bustling with life on a day usually free from rain and thunder except for a light drizzle. Thea and Five danced about the kitchen, maneuvering around each other with plates and dishes in hand like a well oiled machine while Era and Noa rearranged the flowers everywhere and anywhere: on the windowsills, petals scattered across the tables, filling the rooms with a medley of sweet perfumes. 

“Thea?” Five called, startling when he turned around and found Thea right behind him, stuffing another dish of fish  into the already overflowing oven. “Oh! Where are the edible flowers?”  

Thea thought for a moment, humming indecisively while she scanned the kitchen counters, organized and methodical as it was. “Shelf over there, on the right?” 

“Got it.” Five slipped behind her, snatching up the flowers and turning back to chopping and slicing vegetables to arrange in a large bowl while Thea took a breather from the oven, pushing the window open to let out some of the heat, to push a platter of seafood his way. 

“Can you put this out on the table?” 

He swept it up, placing it on the table next to the other scattered appetizers that were well picked over despite it just being the six of them, though he could not see or hear his daughters, six year old forces of chaos that they were. “Where did Erin and Claire go?” 

“I sent them deeper into the house with a basket of extra flowers to decorate with.” Era called, balancing on her toes to hang one last bouquet of flowers on the curtain rod as Noa handed her particular flowers. 

“Put this one next, it will smell better.” Era sniffed the flower tentatively, making a face at Noa that she knew she couldn’t see, then placed it where she said. 

He eyed the hallway warily, scooting back into the kitchen. “I’ll just pretend that those flowers won’t be everywhere within the next hour.” He placed his hands on Thea’s shoulder, peeking over her head to look at the timers. They were all almost done, and the smells wafting from the oven were absolutely delightful. 

Thea let out a contented sigh, tossing aside the over mit she had had in her grip and leaning back against his chest. “Almost done and then we can finally eat. I think between the two of us we shaved more prep time off than last year.” 

Five chuckled, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Nothing beats two agents for organizing holiday meals.” 

No sooner did they pause did the timers go off and the food was carted steaming onto the placeholders at the table and the crisp flower salads were placed alongside them. 

“Erin! Claire! Dinner!” Thea called down the hall, pausing until she heard a sudden barrage of giggled and the sound of two pairs of feet came tearing down the hall. 

Five stepped back at the last second, very nearly taken out by his two daughters as they practically dove into their seats, chattering away about something only they knew the topic of. The flowers that Era had given them seemed to have mostly found their way into the girls’ hair, tied in hastily assembled braids using brightly colored hair ties. He darted into the kitchen once more, motioning for Era and Noa. “Are you guys going to want wine? I think we have honeysuckle and red clover if memory serves right.” 

“I’ll take honeysuckle.” Era said brightly, catching Five around the shoulders in a one armed hug as she passed. “Thank you.” 

Five returned the hug, a rare action that slowly and steadily was becoming less of a rarity, with a roll of his eyes. “Belle, you’re  _family_ stop thanking me.” 

“It’s a habit, I’m  _sorry_.” she whined, dragging Noa over to the table while Five ducked under the counter to grab a bottle of wine, digging out the cork while he walked over to the table. 

There was a pause in conversation as he filled all the adult’s glasses–the twin’s satiated with hibiscus juice in matching glasses–and Five cleared his throat. “Right, well, I see how you little nexus are eying the food,” he said with a smile and pointed look at his daughters, who just giggled and shook their heads with wide, too innocent eyes. “But thank you all for being here, little of a group as we are. There’s no other way I’d rather spend Bloom Fest.” 

“Cheers to that!” Era beamed at them, something in her eyes still deeply emotional after all these years. “To the best family I could ask for.” she bumped her shoulder against Noa’s, voice dropping/ “And the best wife.” 

They all clinked their glasses together before digging into the aromatic dishes set tantalizingly in front of them, heaping their plates full. Thea leaned against his shoulder, pressing a kiss to his cheek and then to his lips when he turned his head, sweet and tasting of flowers. 

 


	21. Five and Thea: Life Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five and Thea's first Life Day together as a couple.

There was scarcely a Life Day, Life Day’s Eve or Life Day’s morn in Five’s recent memory when he had been home, or not alone. There were few Life Day’s in that mix where he could say he had been festive.

He may not be festive now, that would, of course, require him not to be bundled up in a heavy jacket, gloves, and scarf, nor was he on his home of Dromund Kaas, but this Life Day was none the less different.

“You’re telling me you  _worked_ the holidays?” Thea’s hand was warm in his own, snowflakes drifting from the trees catching in her dark hair. 

“I’m telling you that I worked all through the holidays, yes.” Five scrunched up his nose as the icy flakes worked their way under his scarf, using his free hand to pull the warm fabric closer to his neck. “Threats to the Empire don’t take vacations, much as they should consider it.” 

Thea laughed, shaking her head. “I knew Intelligence was hardcore but I didn’t think you guys were a bunch of killjoys too! Ever heard of taking a break, spending time with the family?”

“Taking a break to spend time with the family, requires one to have a family.” Five laced his fingers with Thea’s, tilting his head slightly to look at her. “Which, as it happens, seems to have been granted to me on a Life Day miracle for this year.” 

Whether it was the cold or a blush, Thea’s cheeks pinkened, her shoulder bumping his with an affectionate tease. “Smooth, Valetyn. What’re you trying to flatter me into doing?”

He was quick to respond, looking around at the snow cover landscape. “To sway you to lead us somewhere less cold.”

For the few days, he had managed to break free from his work for the holidays he had let Thea convince him to come to Alderaan. It was a beautiful planet, without question, with snow glittering on the ground and ice sparkling off of the tree branches, and one that he had never had the pleasure of coming to himself (Intelligence had always sent him to Hoth, a hellscape of ice slick enough to send him sprawling and wind cold enough to freeze him half to death) but that did not change the fact that it was  _cold_.

“Valetyn.” Laughter danced through Thea’s voice. “It’s not much colder than Kaas, you’re just being dramatic.” 

“Not much colder?” Five arched his eyebrows, making a face and grumbling;  “What planet have you been living on, dear? My Kaas is a lot more rain and less snow. This is just chilly and frozen.”

Thea let go of his hand in favor of tucking close to his side, giving him a teasing grin as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer. “If you wanted me closer, you could’ve just asked without the grumbling.”

The smile he gave her was warm despite the snow dusting them and the air frosting their breath. “The grumbling was sincere, having you closer is just a welcome benefit.”

“Now you’re  _definitely_  just trying to get out of the snow.” She rolled her eyes at the innocent widening of his eyes. “I know your tricks  _cipher_.” 

“I’m off duty, all my tricks are unusable.” Five retorted, though not outright protesting when they turned around on the path they were walking down. “I was being completely honest.”

**

By the time they made it all the way back down the path, the park was alight with holiday lights. Soft white lights danced in the frost-coated tree branches, while colored lights twined around the benches closest to the main square. From further down the square, where many people were gathered, strains of holiday music drifted through the air.

“It is beautiful…I can say that.” Five said softly looking around. 

“Isn’t it?” Thea sighed, her breath turning the air white. When Five glanced down the lights were shining in her eyes. 

Stars help him, he couldn’t stay irritated at the cold when she was looking around at the scenery. When she started to step forward again he stood still. Despite the people–they were far enough away–he brought his free hand to gently cup her cheek and leaned down to kiss her softly. 

Her hand reached up to rest against the back of his neck as he pulled back just enough so their words were just caught between them. “What was that for?” 

“Thank you,” Five’s voice wasn’t far above a whisper. For loving him, for making his life brighter and giving him a reason to be home. For giving him a home. “For everything.” 

 


	22. Five and Thea: “i woke up, & you were gone.”

“Valetyn…?” Thea’s sleepy voice carried across the quiet air of their living room. Five let his head tilt back and over so he could see her in his peripheral vision. Slowly he raised a finger to his lips, then gestured to couch beside him. Nine was curled up beside him, eyebrows furrowed and expression distressed from the sliver of it he could see above the blanket he had draped over her some time ago. 

Thea kept her voice soft as she shuffled over to stand beside him, turning sleep-clouded eyes to Nine. “I woke up and you were gone. Everything okay?” 

Five let out his breath with a heavy sigh. “I think so. I heard her pacing, couldn’t sleep so I went to see if she was alright.” His hand rubbed the younger agent’s shoulder when she made a small noise of discontent, fear maybe with whatever she was dreaming. “she was awake but not… _there_.” 

He could hazard a guess that Nine being away from Noa was perhaps partially not wanting to disturb her (a concept that Five was quite familiar with, he understood the nightmares better than he would like to.) and most likely from whatever was plaguing her sleep in the first place. It had seemed very much like Nine was sleepwalking, caught in some ongoing version of her nightmare. 

It had to have  _something_ to do with Corellia. Whatever horrible idea had prompted her to message him with a demand that in twenty-four hours he was supposed to find her if she didn’t reply had to be the root here, but he had yet to figure out what. Nine hadn’t offered either, he wasn’t even sure if she had told Noa what had happened yet. 

He could guess though, solely on his own experience in Intelligence and what he could guess he wished he couldn’t. 

“Do you think it’s from…” Thea held her breath as Nine whimpered again, meeting Five’s pained look and motioning across her temple. “from those?”

Unable to hold back another quiet sigh, Five gave a small lift of one shoulder. “I don’t know.” Whatever had happened on Corellia had been mostly healed away, except for the dark bruising around Nine’s cybernetic implants and the multiple marks on her neck and arms that read like pricks of needles. From what Noa had said, Nine had been dealing with trouble with her cybernetics for months by now, damaged already from an incident on Hoth, and if that was what was causing the younger agent’s pain then maybe that would be for the best. 

If his hunch was correct, it had more to do with the needle pricks and whatever had been in those needles. For now though, now he could do nothing except think and speculate and he reached out to squeeze Thea’s hand gently. “Everything’s alright for now, go back to bed.” 

“Are you staying out here?” At his little nod, Thea gave a small sigh of her own, squeezing his hand back gently before slipping away. 

He was probably going to regret an hours-long vigil on the couch, his back unhappy enough at simple motions since the implants had been put in along his spine, but he couldn’t have just left Nine to her mind when she was so obviously out of it. And if that meant staying the early hours of the morning on the couch so that the cipher agent would rest, if not peacefully, then fine. 

He had already failed her once, in the middle of the mess that had become her career and he didn’t intend to do it again. Call it cipher agent to cipher agent, call it a family bond, it didn’t matter. In the span of a few days he had seen both agents he and Thea had taken under their wings break (because of Intelligence, the bitterest part of his thoughts enjoyed reminding him) and part of him wondered how long it would be until one or both of them shattered. 

“Shh, Nine.” He smoothed his hand over her shoulder again when she curled further in on herself, fingers curling tightly around the edge of the blanket. “You’re okay.” 

That was most likely a lie, to her, to him. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was trying to reassure.


	23. Era and Noa: “You’re hiding something from me.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what happens when desperation and two cipher agents are put in the same situation. (Hint: Nothing good).

Her loyalty was coming into question. 

She had done  _everything_ to cover her tracks, to make it clear as day that she was a defector from Imperial Intelligence ready and willing to serve the SIS against the Imperial threat. She had lied and killed her way to becoming Legate, biding her time under her keyword until she could strike. 

And  _still_ , Hunter was doubting her. That needed to change. 

“Five,” Wearing civilian clothes, standing beside her uninformed fellow cipher agent, Era had an idea. They were on an undercover job, or, she was undercover. Five had assumed the Imperial Intelligence role. Nine, of course, had abandoned her post a few months prior. “Attack me.”

“What?” Five turned his head to look at her, then followed the line of her eyes to a pair of SIS agents not far from them. SIS by looks, Kothe’s agents by action. But he wouldn’t know that. “I don’t-” 

They were leaving and Era’s eyes narrowed. She had one chance, one moment to make it convincing. “Stab me, Five. Just trust me. My cover will be blown otherwise.” 

Five shook his head, eyes narrowing to match her own look. “I’m not going to stab you, Nine. What if I kill you?” 

Era stepped closer, aware that with each passing second a surefire way to assure Hunter she was no longer Intelligence’s prized cipher agent was slipping further away. She may already have been convincing enough, beaten up as she was from an unexpectedly up-close fight barely armored, but if she were to convince Hunter it had to be  _real_. 

“You won’t if you do your damn job right.” She shoved one of the vibroblades from her belt against his chest. “You are going to stab me, leave me until those SIS agents find me and report back to their boss, and then you’re going to get me to the nearest medcenter so I won’t die. Got it?” 

“ _Nine_ -” He gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head and the

 hard flint of her glare softened ever so slightly at the conflict she saw there.  _Don’t get attached, hm_? Well, she knew one string she could pull in any loyal agent and she fell back on it now. 

“This is my duty to Intelligence, don’t make me fail it.” He blinked and she pinpointed the moment he relented, the quick rise and fall of his shoulders with a sigh. Cipher agent to cipher agent, there were some things that they needed to do because of their work. Sometimes it was best not to question them. “Make it look convincing.“ 

She braced herself for when her own blade would cut her, ripping her eyes from Five’s when she saw him grimace and wince. Her cry was not acted and she dropped to the dirt when Five’s hold on her vanished. Through watering eyes, she saw the flicker of a stealth generator and just before he was gone, the pained expression on his face. 

There was a small amount of satisfaction, inappropriate in the moment as it was, found in the fact that as much as Five liked to pretend he was cold as stone, even he had his limits. 

Stumbling to her feet she staggered in the direction of the SIS agents, catching their attention when she let her knees give out, not catching herself when her shoulder collided with the ground. Reality strengthed her act, the sharpness of her breaths too intense to be faked, the blood welling between her fingers undeniable.  _Good._

They recognized her, how could they not; Kothe had been parading her around like his new prized akk dog. “Legate?” 

She worked a tremor into her voice, gripping the sleeve of one of the agents–a new recruit by the looks of him, his eyes were wide when he took in her disheveled appearance and injury. “Imperial Intelligence came after me.” She propped herself up on an elbow, then grimaced and let herself slide back down. “A cipher agent. I tried to fight him off but…” They wouldn’t ask questions, like why a cipher agent was all the way out here, not from the sympathy and worry coating their expressions. She was one of them. “He took me by surprise, fought so horribly dirty.”

Five was going to kill her if he heard her. Hell, he might kill her  _because_ of this. He wasn’t briefed on her own mission and this was a breach of protocol. He may not know the full story, but even this was giving away precious information. She trusted Five, he wouldn’t give this away. 

The SIS agents nodded knowingly, sharing looks. She could almost hear their shared thought.  _Damn Imperial agents._  The young, worried one frowned. “We should get you to a medcenter Legate.” 

He went to slide a hand behind her shoulders and she twisted to swat it away, hissing out a breath when it sent a jagged bolt of pain through her side. So maybe this hadn’t been her best idea. “No!” At his wide-eyed look, she blinked and her eyes shifted to fearful. “There were more of them, they could be coming back and they could follow us.” She bit her lip, thinking and spinning a web of lies on the spot. “Leave, let them think they’ve killed me. Then report back to Hunter what happened and tell him I’ll be in contact.” 

The elder of the two gave a nod, casting his eyes around like he expected an ambush. Smart man. Gullible, gullible, man. The young one, however, wouldn’t be deterred so easily. “At least take some kolto-” 

Era shook her head, closing his fingers back around the kolto injector he had kindly held out and pushing his hand away. “That’ll blow my cover. I’ll be alright.” 

If Five did his job and didn’t stab her in anything too important. 

Reluctantly the agents stood and disappeared, probably to watch and see if the agents would return. Era forced herself to relax back onto the ground, for the tension to leave her muscles and for her breath to slow and soften. 

Five reappeared from the trees, walking with a cocky confidence she knew was all an act. But it was what the SIS agents would want to see. The grass crunched beneath his boots as he crouched beside her, fingers pressing against her neck like he was checking for a pulse. Perhaps he was. 

Static crackled through the air as he opened a fake comm channel, voice clipped as he spoke. “Our target is eliminated. Cipher Nine will no longer be an issue.” A pause, like he was listening to an answer and the static cut off. He nudged her with the toe of his boot and she let herself roll with the movement, completely limp. Within seconds he was gone again, and through slitted eyes, she saw the SIS agents vanish as well. 

When Five returned it was for real and he swore viciously when he saw the blood on her shirt, even as she sat up and brushed leaves from her hair. Rusty red mixed with the pale stands of her hair. “Stars damn it, Nine.” Irritation flowed through his voice into the tightness in his shoulders, the set of his jaw when he tossed a kolto injector at her. “You’re too good at playing dead.” 

The kolto at least numbed some of the pain and she took Five’s offered hand and let him pull her to her feet. “Acting’s all part of the job.” 

“ _Never_  make me do that again,” he growled in response. “I don’t know what cover you had to maintain but do  _not_  make me do that again.”

Angry as he may be, he understood the game that cipher agents had to play. 

Noa did not, not on the personal level that Five did. Reports of her injury had automatically been transferred from the Imperial medcenter to the mission report, a report that Era had failed to remember passed through Noa’s hands. 

She was angry,  _stars_  she was angry. It was directed at Five, words sharp as knives and face reading every little bit of anger she felt. “You hurt her!” She aimed a blind strike at Five, missing without actually being able to see him. “You were her partner and you could have killed her!” 

“Noa-” Era voice was tentative from where she leaned against the wall, hand pressed over the still-healing wound to her side. Kolto was in short supply and she had opted out, there would be other agents where kolto could mean life or death. This was a mild inconvenience. 

Noa turned her head and fixed Era in her anger, frowning. She stumbled for only a moment on what to call Era with Five there before venomously growling; “ _Nine,_ you could have been seriously hurt.”  _or killed_ hung on the end, unspoken. 

“It was my idea.” Era stepped away from the support of the wall with a grimace, motioning for Five to leave. “Entirely my idea.” 

Five gave a slight duck of his head. “I should report back to headquarters. Nine, Twenty-four.” When the door slipped closed behind him and it was just the two of them Noa’s anger slipped into a simmering displeasure. Not furious, but still scalding. 

“What were you  _thinking_?” Noa ripped her shoulder from Era’s gentle hand resting on it, taking several steps away. “The Intelligence report said you had been stabbed, do you know what that information makes me think?” 

Era sighed, not closing the distance between them. “I’m sorry, I had to maintain my cover.” 

That was the wrong thing to say, Noa bristled and her expression twisted somewhere between disbelief and her anger. “Injuring yourself for cover, really? Era you were on a mission with Five, there is  _nothing_  in that mission debrief that lends itself to that.” 

Wincing, Era read the question in her voice. Noa wasn’t wrong, her mission debriefs at no point required the kind of cover that would have her fellow agent turning on her.  _Just tell her about Kothe, just tell her about that mission_. 

“It wasn’t for that mission.” Her words stuck in her throat and through gritted teeth retranslated into; “I can’t tell you.” While she should have known her keyword would cut her off, the very programming that kept her from telling Noa everything, it still stung. 

Noa’s anger cooled to a hollow laugh, entirely without humor. She looked at the ground. “Of course.” A deep breath. “You’re hiding something from me. I don’t know what, I don’t understand why. We’re supposed to be partners, remember?” 

Partners. While Era assumed that Noa meant in Intelligence, the powerful team that had been made of them, working together in almost every mission..the dual implication made her flinch.  _Oh, Noa_. She wanted to tell her, couldn’t stand the hurt reading in her voice.  Era prayed she hadn’t just broken the trust that had let Noa stay with her as she had withdrawn more and more after Kothe. 

“I’m sorry. I want to tell you everything.” 

“Then why don’t you?” For a second Noa seemed hopeful that Era would finally explain what was going on, put to rest some of the fears of why she was pulling away. But it broke with two words spoken in a flat, miserable tone. 

“I  _can’t_.” 

Noa turned away from Era, shaking her head. Her droid whined mournfully at her side. “I just…I’ll be back. I need to take a walk.” Grabbing a rain jacket off the hook by the door she slipped outside, and the Kassian rain swallowed her too. 

Era raked a hand through her hair, squeezing her eyes closed. Not this, she couldn’t have ruined this. Not now, not after everything. 

Alone in her apartment in a deathly silence more oppressive than it had ever been she paced around the room before letting her fist slam into the cushion of the couch, anything to take out the nervous, twitchy energy building in her mind. 

All she could see was the anger, the betrayal and under that, the  _fear_  in Noa’s face, all she could hear was the defeat when Era had unwillingly dismissed her. Listening to the rain hammer against the windows, keeping time with her own panicked thoughts, Era set her resolve.

She wasn’t going to drive her away just because some sadistic bastard had muzzled her and tucked away the key. Not today, not _ever._


	24. Era and Noa: The way you said “I love you”: As a thank you

Era very rarely left her paintings when she was in the middle of working on them. But when she heard the front door of her and Noa’s apartment slide open she threw down her paintbrush as quickly as she could without splattering paint  _everywhere_  and tore out into the hall. 

“Noa!” She cried, nearly tripping over the couch as she scrambled over the couch in place of going around it and nearly went sprawling when the droid got too close. 

Noa looked mildly alarmed, coughing out her next exhale when Era’s arms went around her in an enthusiastic hug. “Everything okay?” 

Era pulled back enough to look at Noa and her girlfriend’s hands immediately came up to rest on her face, reading her expression. “Everything is  _wonderful._ A Sith wants  _me_  to do a full wall painting in their home.” While she was notably not the largest fan of Sith, not after dealing with the likes of Zhorrid, Era couldn’t help but grin from ear to ear and bounce on her toes. “But not just any Sith,” 

When she paused, taking a steadying breath in (that did nothing, she was still very near  _exploding_  from excitement) Noa raised an eyebrow. “Not, just any Sith.” Era repeated. “But A’trixa Ethnril and Wren Thornley!” 

“ _Stars_.” Noa gasped. “They’re the two most influential Sith in the upper levels right now.”

“I  _know_.” Era’s hands fluttered in the air excitedly. 

“And your painting’s going to be there…” Noa started. 

“ _I know_.” 

“On a wall, for  _everyone_  to see.” she finished and Era nodded.

“ _Yes!_ Yes, yes yes. My painting, there!” 

Noa was smiling now too and used her hands on either side of Era’s face to draw her down into an enthusiastic kiss. When she pulled back so their foreheads were touching she said; “Era that’s wonderful!”

 Era looped her arms loosely across Noa’s shoulders, eyes shining. “I’ve already spoken to her, I’ll have to stay there a few days but she’ll be away and you can come.” She paused for one second, smile faltering. “But that means we’ll have to push back our departure for Rishi. Is that okay?”

“Of course that’s okay.” Noa said like Era was silly for even asking. “Like I’d want you to miss this opportunity.” 

Practically shaking with excitement, Era kissed Noa again. “ _Stars_  I love you! I love you, so, so much.” She punctuated each word with another kiss until they were both giggling.   
  


Noa’s fingertips brushed across the thin scars across Era’s temples, where her cybernetics used to be, as she pushed back a strand of pale hair before coming to cup her chin again. “I love you too.” 


	25. Era and Noa: The way you said “I love you”: When the broken grass litters the floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angst. Mentions of significant other death and grief NOT CANON

She begged her not to go. 

 _Pleaded_ with her, begged her, tried to reason. Even Noa couldn’t win against a deeply embedded fear of what Intelligence could do. What Intelligence  _could_  do. Maybe she could’ve stood a chance before they sniped down Cipher Five on a mission they orchestrated. 

Era had no business going on this mission. Not when she’s exhausted, worn to the breaking point. Sleepless for several nights, more sleepless than not the past few  _weeks_. 

(It had only been weeks. That should’ve been another red flag.)

Her cybernetics were no where near functioning, putting her out of even normal functionality for days at a time, the delicate enhancements to her eyes playing with her vision enough that she couldn’t even bring herself to paint. 

 _Still_  she insisted on going. And nothing short of throwing herself in front of the door would keep her from leaving. Maybe she should have. But what Noa won’t admit is that the very fear that sent Era out held her  _back_. 

Noa had seen moment by moment the manhunt for Five begin, watched the orders be given to shoot when they locked him their sniper’s cross hairs. She watched Intelligence’s top agent hit the ground. 

If Five couldn’t make it out, if his doubts were found out then what chance did Era stand unless she played along until they could get out.  _She should have stopped her_. 

Vector promised to protect her, as he always did. He promised to bring her back, like he always did. If anything else he would bring her back as he did after Hoth. Alive, nearly not, but still alive. It’s enough for her to step back and let Era–no, Nine. It had been Nine in those last weeks, there’s no denying it. A defense of hers as old as time. Nine never held.–walk through that door.

It’s a mirror to the report all the Fixers were sent after Five. Word by word it’s the same. 

Shot down. Killed instantaneously. KIA due to a miscalculation in the field. 

(Era didn’t make mistakes. She didn’t miss things. Not when she had Noa to come to, not in all six years she had been a Cipher. She didn’t start then, either.)

Just as Five was, just as every fallen Cipher before her and every fallen Cipher after her Era was memorialized in the Wall. Her star was the first in the wall next to Five. Memorialized as Cipher Nine of course, as far as Intelligence was concerned Erabelle Torven never existed after she took the mantle of Cipher Nine. 

Whispers follow her memorization that it’s too close a coincidence, that Intelligence must have purposely taken Nine out. True or not, Noa didn’t care, either way they took Era from her in the most vicious way possible. 

She couldn’t stand to stay in Intelligence long after, she resigns within a few weeks. But she does let another agent guide her up to the Wall, guide her hand to the star designated to Cipher Nine. She can’t see the holo projection of Era, but she knows it’s a standard Intelligence holo. Uniform, formal and  _lifeless_. Not like any of the holos in their apartment. 

But she can’t  _see_  them. All she had left is the memory of Era’s voice–born and bred Kaasian, elegant but unbearably gentle when she wanted to be, the memory of the shape of her face, the way she smelled, the feel of her hair. The way she felt laying next to her at night. Still, eventually she asked Vector to describe her appearance to her, just to try and keep her alive. 

It didn’t work. She had never seen Era, not in that way, not  _literally_. Described like that she couldn’t keep her picture there, she may as well have been a stranger. 

Even the memory of her voice started to fade. Never completely, some things she could hear and they would instantly be echoed back to her by Era. But she stopped being able to remember every nuance in her voice. That scared her more than anything, hurt Noa more than anything else. If she lost that, she’d have nothing. 

If she relied on rogue Intelligence agents she could get records of Era’s Intelligence briefings. Audio recordings, from Hutta all through Corellia. As much as she wanted that to fill the void, it isn’t the same. Nothing would be the same, but the woman speaking on those recordings was to clearly Cipher Nine. That clipped, official voice was as unfamiliar as the face described to her in vivid detail. Real recordings of  _Era_  were far and few between, if they had ever existence in the first place. No amount of digging pulled those up. 

Era had unfinished paintings in her studio. The largest, Noa knows, was the Kaasian cityscape she had been commissioned for by a large scale Sith noblewoman. She hadn’t been able to finish it because of her eyes. But there were smaller paintings there too, some near completion and others barely touched, Noa could feel the dried paint under her fingertips. 

When she asked Vector–always Vector, the one person aside from Noa and Five that Era said she trusted with her life completely. Sometimes Noa wondered if that trust was misplaced. It’s then she has to remind herself that it was  _Intelligence_  that killed her, not Vector.–to describe one of the unfinished paintings to her it’s barely a single painting before Noa gets up and leaves, feeling as though she’s choking. 

She wanted  _Era_  to be the one explaining it. To explain her work with such passion and exquisite detail that Noa could imagine she was looking at it with her own eyes. 

She wore her mask since that mission. Era’s not there to bring the world to life.

 Nothing moved in their apartment, but everything felt foreign. In the middle of the night, awoken from a nightmare to the emptiness beside her in their room, Noa brushed too closely against the wall. 

A painting, one that she knew the exactly position of. A sunset from their first time to Rishi, over the ocean with the stars just beginning to shine through the sun’s rays, crashed to the ground in a scream of breaking wooden frame and shattering glass. 

Noa stumbled away from it, hitting the opposite wall with her back. She fixated on the point where the glass fell, breath beginning to hiccup into dry sobs even if her eyes couldn’t cry. A step forward brought her toes to the edge of the broken glass and Noa waited, waited for the running footsteps that always followed her slamming into something. 

Nothing. 

“Era.” Noa’s voice broke before weeks of numb cracked, grief slamming into her. “You were supposed to come home!” 

No response and her next sob was more than a breath, a keening cry as she sank to the floor at the edge of the glass. “I  _want_  you back.” Elbows on knees her hands come up to cover her face, whole body shaking like a leaf. “Stars  _damn_ you, I love you and want you  _back_.” Speaking to the empty air she couldn’t stop, voice halting and skipping and  _breaking_  but still flowing. “I want to hear your voice, I want to walk in the gardens with you again, I want to be next to you again. Stars I’d listen to you talk color theory again just to  _hear you_.” A shuddering breath. “I want  _you_ again.”

When her droid finally booted up again after it finds her curled on the floor, face still turned towards the shattered painting as her shoulders shook. 

They left the apartment not long after. It felt wrong, leaving Dromund Kaas had been meant to be done with Era, selling all their belongings to travel the galaxy hand in hand, but Noa couldn’t stand to stay there any longer, not in an apartment that felt all to empty. 

Not when a part of her heart was gone. 


	26. Era and Noa: The Voss Wedding

The grass was soft beneath her clenched hands when Era dropped to her knees, curling over as though she couldn’t support herself any longer.  Violent, painful sobs wracked her shoulders, tears clawing hot tracks down her cheeks and nose to drop onto her shaking hands.  

This wasn’t happening. She hadn’t just stood in a sacred building, staring into the eyes of a man who would willingly take her as his wife–her, an outsider who had no place among the Voss–to help her, and  _lied_. Lied with enough conviction to make those around her believe it. But she couldn’t, _wouldn’t_ believe it. Not when the mention of marriage had chilled her blood, not when she had broken down trying to explain to Noa what was going on.

_Noa._

Era sobbed harder, hands clenching hard enough to pull tuffs of grass from the dirt. Noa. who deserved none of the last few months. Who didn’t deserve the months of lies and her pulling away. Who didn’t deserve to not hear from her for weeks after she was supposed to come home and finding out she had nearly died in the snows of Hoth. Who most of all, didn’t deserve to hear over holocall the shattered description of a job where only the word marriage stood out.

Where a death– _because of her_  skittered through her mind–led to the one lie Era could barely force herself to tell. Where Intelligence finally broke them, pulled the one question Era never wanted to hear between her and Noa.

_“Did you find someone else? Someone less…problematic?”_

The one question where all the words that she could mean from the depths of her heart, spoken through a breaking voice could do  _nothing_  because the very next day she would be walking into the glow of the Sacred Flame and vowing her life to another.

It was all falling to pieces, her carefully constructed life outside of Intelligence shattering and bleeding red into the hard shell of Nine. All because she failed. She failed, again and  _again_  and it all led to this. It was her fault that Noa’s trust in her had faltered, it was her fault that she was ruining everyone’s lives along with her own. Her fault, her’s alone.

When her anguished cries had finally subsided to hitching breaths and sluggish tears still sliding down her cheeks the white of her dress was stained with dirt and grass, her cheeks red and stinging and her eyes puffy and painful. She huddled on the grass, calming her breaths as best she could manage, shifting her face into a mask.

If the Cabal- _-it’s Intelligence’s fault…._ came the voice’s whispers– wanted to take everything away from her then fine. Let them.

But they would get nothing.

Cipher Nine had nothing to lose.

 


	27. Era and Noa: “ shut up and kiss me already. ”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for the Imperial Agent story, warnings for angst and not happy things.

Five years. That was how long a Cipher usually lasted in Intelligence work. Seven if you were lucky, ten if you had all the galaxy’s gods on your side. 

Era had made it three. Two before she had become a threat to the Dark Council and muzzled like a tuk’ata hound. She would be lucky to make it to five, she now realized. Just as she realized she was running on very limited time. 

Something in her should be worried, no, something in her was  _terrified,_ it was just buried under a practiced wall. Already, even before she left Dromund Kaas she was slipping into Cipher Nine. 

That never used to happen before. 

This mission felt different though, ever since her datapad had alerted her two days ago and ever since her briefing at Intelligence Headquarters just the day before. It could be that this was her hardest op yet with the lowest odds she had encountered even with three years in the field as a Cipher. It could be that her cybernetics were acting up  _again_ , even weeks after being repaired or the fact that her last three off planet ops hadn’t gone off as smoothly as they should have. As smoothly as  _she_ should have made them go. Nine didn’t make mistakes. 

Era did and Nine kept darting just out of her reach in the field. 

It all felt like a set up and sometime early in the dawn hours it had hit her that maybe this was Intelligence’s way of showing her out the door. A thinly veiled end to her threat. 

Noa had picked up on it as well, or maybe it was her own fear peaking through too. Ever since Era had finally,  _finally_  been able to talk about Hunter, about the months of silence she had kept and why, Noa had been horror struck to the point where she now wanted out from Intelligence almost as badly as Era wanted out of her own agent bindings. 

But they couldn’t just leave, they both knew that. Era had heard the stories, heard what had happened to Cipher Five– _stars,_ Five. He may have been a bastard but he was a friend, as good an agent as any and he had still snapped. He had tried to warn her. Tried so damn hard and she had ignored him– and Noa knew the numbers better than perhaps anyone at Intelligence when it came to rogue agents. Leaving wasn’t an option. They could just grit their teeth and soldier through until the end, one way or another. 

One way or another didn’t come up in discussion. One way or another wasn’t an option they considered. She had needed to bring it up, ever since her realization. So, dressed in her pressed Intelligence uniform, steeled and bordering cold in the way on Nine was, Era stood in the middle of their apartment’s main room with her bag hanging heavy off her shoulder. 

“Era, please don’t go.” Noa knew she wasn’t going to sway her, but still she asked one last time. There was always the chance Era would waver and choose to stay. If the circumstances were different, she would. If it weren’t a very real fear that her failure to report would be taken out on Noa. 

So she closed her eyes, steeled her nerve and spoke in a pained voice. “Noa, I have to go.”

 Noa’s hand was light as it brushed along the side over her face, by her cybernetic implants. “I know these have been bothering you, it’s not safe to go out in the field like this.”

Era caught at her hand, wrapping it in her own. “It’s always dangerous.” she reminded unnecessarily. Dangerous worked in levels, and this was more than just dangerous. She twined her fingers with Noa’s, brows knitting. She couldn’t leave on a false promise she would be fine.  “But this one’s…different. If I don’t come back-”

“Don’t you dare say it.” Noa’s voice shook. “Don’t.”

She  _needed_  to say it. Needed it to be in the air when she walked through the door because she had learned a long time ago that nothing was certain in the field. Least of all now. “If I don’t come back,” she repeated, forcing the words out even as she watched Noa’s face crumple. “I’m…sorry for all of this. It wasn’t how it was supposed to work.” 

Noa’s voice broke this time, the hand not trapped in Era’s like an anchor coming up to clench the thick fabric of her jacket. “Shut  _up_.” 

Her hand tightened on Era’s like she was never going to let go and her carefully constructed wall against that doubt nearly tumbled down right there. “Just shut up and kiss me because you’re going to come home and I’m going to see you again and you’re going to  _stop_  apologizing to me like this is the last time you’ll set foot through that door.”

Despite the cold first squeezing her heart when Era let her free hand come up to cup Noa’s cheek and leaned down to press their lips together it was perhaps more tender and gentle than any other. “I love you, you know that right?” It was merely a whisper as she pulled back but Noa winced as though she had landed a blow. 

“Tell me when you come home.” Slowly, unwillingly Noa released Era’s hand. “When we’re leaving Intelligence and leaving this planet.” Just before her hand pulled away she reached up to share one last kiss, her resolve matching Era’s resignation squarely. “I love you too.” It was just as quiet, a breath shared between them more than words meant for the air around them as they stepped away from each other. 

 There were no promises that she would be coming home, just assurances made with false confidence. Such was the way of Imperial Intelligence. 

When Era cast one last look over her shoulder before stepping into the taxi that would bring her to the spaceport she could just see Noa and her droid standing in the doorway through the rain. 

In the few seconds before she blinked she tried to memorize every detail. In the seconds after her eyes opened again and she slipped into the taxi her eyes had hardened and her dread had been locked away. 

While she fought back tears and a choking fear Nine sat in her place, jaw set and hands clenched in her lap. 

Somewhere, her timer was ticking, counting down and just waiting for the chance to-

Stop. 

 


	28. Era and Noa: ♙: Sharing a bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is some end of agent-training academy Era and Noa

Soon enough Era and Noa would be shipped off into Imperial Intelligence to serve the Empire–a reward for years of intensive work and studying. It was the ultimate goal, at least for Era, and it was  _so close_. 

Not close enough. They still had their final tests to make it through, applied skills first, physical combat tests coming after. The combat and skills that targeted future Cipher agents were the easiest by far. It was the technology application, data and numbers that left her absolutely clueless. 

Picking up patterns in body language and vocal cues she could do. Manipulating information out of people was easy enough. Endless streams of numbers and codes? Not so much. 

So, just as she was helping Noa try and prepare for the combat tests without the use of her droid, Noa was trying her best to get Era to understand the finer aspects of data analysis and application. Needless to say, it wasn’t going well. 

“I just don’t-” Era yawned, shaking her head. “Sorry-I just don’t get…” The word escaped her as her mind pulled a blank and she gestured at the page in her textbook. “ _that_.” 

They were holed up in Noa’s dorm this evening, it had been the closest to reach after they had walked out into a downpour. It was cold, dark with the sheets of the rain falling and they had haphazardly cocooned themselves in blankets with their textbooks piled close enough to look at without testing the chilled air. Even if Era didn’t understand half of what Noa was trying to tell her, it was nice and cozy here. Much better than her own dorm, where it was just her. Her roommate had finally broken. There one day, gone by nightfall. It was less than encouraging. 

“You just have to look at it-” Noa covered her mouth as she yawned as well, leaning against Era’s shoulder so she could point at a column of numbers. “methodically, try and find the pattern. It’s the same thing you do in conversations.” 

“It so is not.” Era complained, leaning her head back with a dramatic groan. “It’s a bunch of gibberish.” 

 

It might as well be with how much the words and explanations were blurring together right now. It had to be well past midnight and everything had stopped processing well before now. Her eyes felt heavy and she could feel the beginnings of a tired headache coming on from staring at the text for so long.

She was also pretty sure Noa had fallen asleep on her shoulder after leaning over to point out the number column. There wasn’t a point in trying to cram in anymore information tonight. With some effort she wiggled her arm out from beneath the blankets to close her textbook. “I should go.”

Noa smacked down her arm when she went to disentangle herself from the rest of the blanket. “Just stay here tonight.” She didn’t even bother to lift her head from her shoulder. “It’s dark, way too late and raining sheets.”

That offer was tempting…but Era hesitated. “It’s not that far of a walk, really.”

“Erabelle,” Noa complained, like she was missing a very large point. “Stay here, you won’t be very effective in testing if you get sick.”

Era sighed, shuffling her textbook to the side with her feet. It shifted too far and thumped to the floor. “Fine. I’ll stay here.” She pulled the blanket cocoon back up to her chin and shimmied down so her neck wouldn’t be angled against the wall.

It was a good thing she had been convinced to stay, she probably wouldn’t have made it all the way back to her room. Second after settling back down the heaviness in her eyes won and she drifted off into an exhausted sleep. In any other state of wakefulness it would have been an uncomfortable position, half slumped against the wall, a pen somewhere under her back but she was too tired to care. It seemed Noa was too, for she fell asleep still leaning on Era.

By morning they were still slumped against each other, though the rain had long since moved on and sunlight was steadily falling through the window.


	29. Era and Noa: “Can I sit here? The other tables are full."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Academy Set Era and Noa

It took six passes by the near empty table and three high intensity, deep in thought looks leaning against the wall for Erabelle to finally stop and rest her hands on the table, nearly startling the lone woman sitting there out of her skin. With a wince, Erabelle lifted her hands from the table in favor of brushing her hair behind her ear. “Sorry, can I sit here? All the other tables are full.”

That wasn’t exactly true, there were plenty of other open tables she could have pulled a chair up to but the other agent-in-training had caught her full attention well over a month ago and she had been building up the courage to talk to her since. Somehow asking if she could sit after pacing by like a stalking gundark wasn’t nearly as friendly.

Conversation–or what seemed to be a conversation between the woman and her massive, rather intimidating droid, stopped dead and her face turned towards Erabelle, managing to look curious even with the mask covering where her eyes would be. “Um…yeah, go ahead.” The droid gave off a series of beeps and the woman nodded before looking back as Erabelle slid into one of the chairs.

“Erabelle, right?” Erabelle started to nod before pausing.

“Yeah, but I don’t think we’ve met…” She trailed off, tapping her nails on the table. Stars forbid they had met and she’d just forgotten her name. That was not how she wanted to start this off. She kicked herself for being so hesitant, her usual knack for talking up a storm had short circuited and she began to wonder if she should have made and seventh and eighth pass by the table just to build up her nerve.

“I’m Noa. And we haven’t met, not exactly. But well…I’ve heard your name a few times. More than a few times actually.” The woman, Noa bit her lip and looked over at her droid again, who just let loose another quick string of chirps and beeps that Era had no hope of understanding. She wanted to know what it was saying, but she flushed as the second part of Noa’s sentence caught up with her. Oh so she had a name for herself did she? That was definitely not how she had wanted this to go. The last thing she needed was a reputation.

“Oh?” She stuttered out before shaking her head. “I hope the other agents haven’t been spreading rumors about me?”

“Rumors? No, no, not at all.” Noa scrambled, red creeping into her cheeks. “Just people grumbling when you beat them in fights that’s all.” Her blush deepened when the droid beeped and Erabelle heard a distinct thump that she assumed was Noa kicking it under the table.

Relieved that the talk wasn’t harsh she grinned, tilting her head as she inspected the duo. “Well glad that’s out in the open air. What’ve you and your droid been talking about? I hope I wasn’t interrupting a deep conversation.”

Noa, who had looked down at the table, glanced up quickly back at Era almost as though she was surprised she wasn’t getting up and leaving. “It was hardly deep. It was mostly complaining, it likes to do that.” That earned a violent whirl of chirps and Noa made a face. “Point proven.”

Erabelle laughed. “I haven’t seen many opinionated droids before.”

“Well here’s the most opinionated one you’ll ever find.” Noa joined in Erabelle’s laughter and she grinned. Maybe a seventh pass redo wouldn’t be necessary after all.

Talking became easy after their stuttering first words to each other. So easy, in fact that their free period passed quickly in a sea of laughter and sharp comments. Erabelle was a wealth of energy and conversation and Noa was happy to continue. Noa remained endearingly flustered–later Era would learn that she had been one of the first people to actually talk to Noa–for much of that first meeting.  
A single, long winded conversation turned to two, two turned to three and three became a friendship that only became closer while the intensity of training tore others apart. By the time they crossed into the threshold of Imperial Intelligence they were inseparable, pushed apart only by duty.

So when, at twenty-three years old and newly named a Cipher Agent Erabelle reentered Imperial Intelligence Headquarters to find a familiar face she had to do a second pass down the hallway, just to make sure her eyes weren’t deceiving her.

When she entered the meeting room with the orders to wait for Keeper there she couldn’t resist leaning against the table in the center of the room and asking with a sly smile. “Can I sit here? The other tables are full.”


	30. Era/Noa: “I love you from the bottom of my heart, but I don’t trust your cooking. Stay out of my kitchen."/"Don't freak out but I got flower everywhere"

Evenings in Kaas City more often than not were sticky with humidity and the spitting drops of rain or chilled with rain falling in earnest. Thunder always provided ambient noise and cloud cover had a habit of limited in light hours of the day into a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event. Evenings in Kaas were tangling together under a blanket to ward off the rain with candles or low lit lamps to soften the grey darkness and walks into the city huddled under an umbrella. 

Now, evening light filtered through the open sliding doors, spilling across the floors in brilliant oranges and yellows, the billowy curtains that hung across the door twisting their way inside and out. Instead of the hammer or pitter-patter of rain, the ocean hummed its song, rushing loud then soft, and birds quiet chirping was still flowing through the air. 

This was Rishi, and there was something oddly fitting about choosing here to breathe after years on Kaas City serving Intelligence. 

One thing hadn’t changed though and that was Era dancing around the open kitchen, flitting from island to cabinet to counter and back, digging through tins of spices and other cooking needs and muttering to herself. The sharp hiss of overflowing boiling liquid caught her attention and she whipped her head around at the sound, then bounded over to the pot, turning down the heat and sticking in a spoon to stir down the bubbles as she glared peevishly at the offending pot. 

Keeping her eyes on the pot she backed over the cabinet again and turned her back. snapping her eyes back to the pot to glare at it warily. In her half-attentive rummaging her forearm knocked a precariously perched bag. It tipped and she scrambled to catch it, hands doing nothing more than forcing the flour out of the  opened upper half and sending it splattering across the counter top and floor. “No, no  _nooo_.” 

Slamming the bag back on the counter, sending up white puffs of flour into her face, and glaring at it she scraped a handful into her palm and stuffed it back into the bag. “I try to do something nice and  _that’s_ how this is going to go…” 

Had Noa been able to see then she would have immediately known of the chaos that had taken over the small flat when she saw her fiancee–even thinking the word still made Era want to clap her hands together like an excited little girl–perched on the island’s counter top much too innocently. Hands folded in her lap, smile much to sweet, legs swinging idly back and forth. 

Her droid, however, made a series of dissatisfied beeps and whirs that Era mostly understood and she sent a warning look at the droid. “ _Hi_ , was your errand successful?” 

Noa’s droid–blast it, she was going to throw the damn droid into the crystal clear ocean water when they were alone next, she swore it–came to the edge of the kitchen and squealed, sharp and high pitched and skittered back over to Noa, its clicks and beeps just slow enough for Era to mostly pick up on what it was saying. 

 _Era=caused destruction/Noa+common sense=make her stop_.

“I did  _not_ cause destruction!” Scowling, Era slid off the counter and slid to lean against the pillar that stood at the side of the island, effectively hiding the kitchen disaster, still dusted white from the flour explosion, from Noa’s ‘view’. “I just may or may not have spilled flour everywhere so  _please_  don’t freak out.” 

“Era…” Noa’s voice shook with suppressed laughter as she turned her head between the droid and her fiancee. Listening to a few more of the droid’s comments and okay, not  _totally_ hyperbolic descriptions Noa shook her head, actually laughing now. When she came over felt for Era’s shoulders and let her hands rest there, turning them so that she stood on the threshold of the kitchen instead of the other way around. “I love you from the bottom of my heart, but I your cooking is…well..” With a sympathetic pat on her shoulder, Noa gave her a faux-serious look. “So stay  _out_ of my kitchen.” 

“But I cooked…” Cutting her eyes over to her attempt at dinner that hadn’t looked appetizing when she had first finished it and now looked even less so, and sighed. “something. I tried.” 

Still laughing under her breath, Noa let her hands wander up to Era’s jaw, leaning in to kiss her. “Is tonight a takeout kind of night?” 

Relenting on her pouting, Era smiled and kissed Noa back, letting their foreheads touch when she pulled away. “Unless you want to make something. But it’s kind of a war zone in there.” 

“We can go find somewhere, I’m sure. One of the Rishii recommended this one place when we landed…” 

“We’re taking dinner recommendations from a  _bird person_?” 

Interlocking her fingers with Era’s, the metal of their rings clinking together, Noa started pulling her towards the door. “No, we’re taking dinner recommendations from the  _locals_. It’ll be interesting!”

Still unsure, Era gestured towards the door. “Lead the way then.” 

Perhaps, the wrong thing to say, as in her haste and lack of droid in front of her, Noa tripped against the leg of the couch that was in a place outside of where muscle memory put it. With a yelp from both parties, as Noa windmilled her arms to avoid falling and Era jumped forward to keep her from doing so. They ended up caught against the back of the couch, dangerously close to falling still, Era’s arms hooked under Noa’s and Noa clinging to Era’s arms. 

“Maybe you  _shouldn’t_  lead the way.” Era giggled, burying her face against Noa’s shoulder as they worked to right themselves even as the both of them dissolved into peals of laughter. 

Opinionated and condescending ever, showing as disgust as a droid could, Noa’s seeing eye droid rolled past and let out a series of what could only be described as weary beeps.  _Era+Noa=idiots/get a room._


	31. Era and Noa: “I, um, might’ve gone a little bit overboard on the shopping.” “A little bit?!”

There was a problem. A very overflowing problem that might have taken over most of the floor and all of the bed. Era raked a hand through her hair, narrowing her eyes in a calculating glare first at her closet, then to the clothes not in her closet. There was a very distinct pile with things that no longer fit, no longer fit  _in_ , or she just flat out regretted buying. And then there was well…

“Era?” Her eyes widened when she heard the front door open and close.  _Oh no_.

By the time Noa and her droid reached the bedroom door Era was leaning against the door frame, trying to take up as much visibility into the room as possible. “Hi!” For all her Intelligence training she still sounded way to cheerful. The droid beeped something to Noa–that Era had not been able to understand, damn that droid–that caused Noa to glance back at Era with a questioning raised eyebrow.

“The droid wants to know why you’re dressed like you went out.” It might have been insulting, or accusing with any other person but it was common knowledge in their household that the amount of times Era went out along recently was borderline zero.  _Damn that droid_.

“Well,” Era laughed nervously, propping both elbows on the sides of the doorframe. “About that…I  _did_  go out because I saw there was this huge sale going on at one of my old favorite stores..”

“You didn’t.” Noa crossed her arms, pressing her lips together as the droid snuck by Era’s leg and let out a high pitched squeal. Era didn’t need to be fluent in the droid’s language to understand that it had found not only the mess of clothes spilling from her closet, but also the number of bags she had haphazardly stuffed in the corner.

“No, no I did. And I,um, might’ve gone a little overboard on the shopping.” Era put on her most innocent smile even as the droid shoved by her, beeping furiously. Noa’s expression shifted between mild amusement to surprise before finally settling somewhere between the two.

“A little bit?!” Noa covered her mouth with her hand, looking from the droid, to Era, to the room over her shoulder. “Era is the droid exaggerating?”

Era looked over her shoulder, biting her lower lip. “Probably not. But I  _did_  do some organizing alongside the new clothes.” There was a disbelieving whine from the droid. “Well it will be organizing at some point.”

There were a few beats of silence before Noa snorted in laughter, shaking her head. “How do you do it? Where does all your self control run off to?”

“They were on  _sale_ , Noa. And they looked nice and  _somehow_  just ended up in the bag.” Era sighed, sagging against the door frame with an exaggerated pout. “It’s a serious problem.”

They stared at each other silently for another few seconds, the innocent smile still beaming and Noa looking like she was trying not to burst out laughing before she caved. “Improve fashion show for your new finds?”

Era clapped, bouncing on her toes like a little girl. “Thought you’d never ask! Give me five minutes to clean up the absolute disaster of our room.” She stepped forward to peck Noa on the cheek before disappearing into their room with the door sliding closed behind her.

Noa’s droid gave a series of beeps that could only be described as exasperated and she nudged it with her foot. “Be nice, it makes her happy.”




 


	32. Era and Noa: “I love you, you know that right?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** There are spoilers in this for the IA story line on Quesh**

Her mind was her own again. There was no muzzle or leash tying her down any longer. There was no threat to Kaas City. 

Era’s knees thumped painfully on the warehouse floor, her wide eyes fixed on the plasma barrier where the artillery had ripped through  _him_. Shaking hands reached up to cover her mouth and she rocked forward, bowing her head. Too much had happened, too much in too short of  a time. She had tried to  _talk_ , she had tried to be merciful. It had failed. She was free. Kaas City, in flames, Intelligence headquarters nothing but rubble, images that had haunted her since she had set foot in this stars forsaken place rushed up again only to be shoved aside and replaced by the seconds before the artillery fired, eyes fixed on  _his_  in a burning anger that had followed her since Nar Shaddaa. The image of the artillery room, still barred by the red plasma shield burned into her mind’s eye.

Muffled by her hands, she screamed.

__

She waited until her crew has all gone to sleep to retreat to her room, pull her blankets off her bed and into a corner where she felt less exposed, and punch in a holo frequency she knows like the back of her hand. Noa was  half asleep when she picked up, a questioning hello drowned out by a yawn. The sight is so normal, so completely normal, that Era’s breath rushed out in a strangled sob, hours of wired tension snapping. The tears came fast and hard, jolting Noa to a state of alarm and semi more wakefulness. 

When she could finally speak and breath without a sob stealing her words she apologized, assuring that everything was alright. Just as she opened her mouth to write off the attack as work stress something in her mind clicked. She could speak now, there was nothing keeping her from explaining everything. Months of forced silence had taken that away. This late wasn’t the time to tell Noa everything she had been keeping secret but she finally _, finally_ admits she’s not alright. She said nothing of Kothe, not yet, only the threat against Kaas City. For the moment it was enough. 

__

Noa and her droid were already at the hangar when the  _Lark_  lands. Era was off the ramp before it had fully let down and ran the distance between them. She pulled her close, burying her head against Noa’s shoulder. Assuring herself that this was reality, that everything was fine, and that the images of rubble and flames had been the imagination. 

“I love you, you know that right?” Muffled as it is by Noa’s shoulder her voice is haunted, strained. 

“I know.” Noa assured, clearly taken aback by the state Era was in, seeming near panicked and wired even after nearly a full day. She hugged Era just as tight, if not tighter when she felt her shaking. “It’s alright, Era.” 

Era shook her head. “It’s not. These past months…the things I’ve hid from you, acting like shit…if I had lost you-” She broke off with another shake of her head, squeezing her eyes closed. 

“I’m still here.” Noa’s voice was firm, but still gentle. She stepped back enough to bring her hand up to Era’s face. Era leaned into her touch, letting out a stuttering breath. “You can tell me all you need to when we’re home. But I’m fine, you’re fine. We’re both  _fine._ ” she stressed. 

Some of the tension drained out of Era and quietly she agreed. “Alright, okay.” She slipped her hand into Noa’s, letting out the breath she had been holding. Noa squeezed her hand and together they left the shadow of the  _Lark,_ hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. 


	33. Era and Noa: You know they’re going to use the things you love against you.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some angst with a bit of OG Five mixed in (he's been completely revamped)

Intelligence was quiet for once, instead of the madhouse it had been for several months out of the past year. Era was slumped in her chair, nursing a cup of watery office caf with a wrinkled nose and curled lip–she hated caf, but it had been a long day after an even harder off planet op and she needed something stronger than tea to keep her going. She was waiting for Noa to get out of a meeting, they were planning on leaving headquarters to get lunch somewhere in the city when their last meetings ending and Era’s had let out earlier than planned.

“Hello, Nine.” Era jumped, nearly knocking over her cup and turned her eyes up to the agent that had just stopped by her desk.

“Five.” She greeted curtly, with no small amount of wariness. Five was an older agent, more experienced in the field and had made a habit of trying to teach Era how to do her job. While she was pretty sure he meant well, many of his ‘teachings’ didn’t mix well with her own ideas and it had created a strange tension that sat between them. “Do you have more irrefutable ideas to bestow on me?” 

“Such sarcasm wounds me.” His voice was dry though his expression was serious. “I have a warning for you, actually.” 

“A warning?” Era cocked an eyebrow, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, “What warning could you possibly give me?”

Five crossed his own arms, meeting her sharp look with one of his own. “It’s obvious there’s something going on between you and Fixer Twenty-Four-”

 _Noa_ , Era wanted to correct. But then it hit her again, as it had many times since she had become a Cipher. They didn’t have their names, they had ranks and numbers. Instead she settled for bristling and snapping; “That’s not a concern of yours.” 

“ _Nine,_  would you just listen!” Five put his hand down on her desk, leaning close enough so he could drop his voice and still be heard by her. “I couldn’t care less what you do with your life but do  _not_  let it interfere with your job as a Cipher. Intelligence won’t like it if their promising new agent suddenly has second thoughts about her priorities.” Era couldn’t tell if that was a veiled threat, but she bit her tongue at the intensity of his look. Five glanced over his shoulder, then back at her.  “You know they’re going to use the things you love against you.”

Taken aback, Era floundered. “I..I know my enemies will.” She set her jaw. “And I’m prepared for that.” 

“Think hard about who you’re enemies are, Nine. Really ask yourself if it were to come down to Twenty-Four or your mission what you would choose. There’s only one right answer there and if you don’t fix it then I’d suggest changing your answer.”

“Thank you, Five.” She said curtly, eyes wandering to the hallway where she was just able to see Noa exiting one of the meeting rooms. “But I know where my priorities are. I don’t intend to give Noa up based on your paranoia.” She stood, ducked under his arm and met Noa just as she entered the main room. She was greeted with a smile she couldn’t help but return and they walked side by side across the room, towards the exit. Before she disappeared from view Era cast a look over her shoulder to Five, who was still standing by her desk, with defiance in her eyes. 

Intelligence wasn’t going to control her life, she had decided that long ago, and the paranoid advice of a lone Cipher would not be allowed to plant the seeds of fear in her own mind. Defiance was not becoming of an agent. 

__

Five had been right.  _They_  would use the things she loved against her. But Five was gone now, he had disappeared only a month after he had spoken to her. All problematic agents disappeared. 

Era was problematic, so Intelligence had installed a muzzle without her knowledge. A fail safe if she went rogue against the Sith. A fail safe that had been leaked.  There was nothing she could do about that any longer except determine who her real enemy was.  _Intelligence, those bastards are manipulating you_. the voice in her mind, sitting on the same paranoia she had ridiculed Five for was screaming. But now all she could see was a holocom, the only thing not overturned in her apartment, floating in the center of the room. It’s dull blue light cast her in stark blue highlights and dark shadows.

“Legate.” The voice, cooly calm and snaking through the room from the holocom’s small speakers caused her fingers to curl into firsts so tight her knuckles went white. She let out a shuddering breath. Her pale eyes, made silver by the paler blue light were  transfixed on the video feed, showing only a tied up miraluka woman, eye mask gone and scars reopened and bloodied. Her mind raced in a single pattern;  _Not Noa, anyone but Noa. Not Noa._

She schools her mind to blankness, her entire body tense even as she straightens into a stiff parade rest. “What game are you playing at?” She spit, voice a low growl. It didn’t faze the cool voice. 

  “We have been forced to collect some insurance. I’ve been told there are rumors that you are questioning you’re loyalty to us. I do not enjoy taking the measures against you. Do as you’re told and nothing will happen, I assure you. But be warned, Legate, I have eyes everywhere.”

Blue light winked out, hurled against the wall hard enough for it to break and she is cast in total darkness except for the faint grey light from the stormy sky outside. The strings holding her up are cut and she drops to her knees,harsh breaths grating in and out of her lungs and filling the stifling quiet around her.

Five had tried to warn her and she had brushed him off. She had told him she was prepared for anything. She wasn’t prepared,  _couldn’t_  be prepared for the horror and fear that threatened to suffocate her where she knelt. 

They were using the thing–the person–she loved more than anything else against her. And it worked. Anger hissed through her veins, hardening her resolve to go after her enemies with tooth and claw ready, only for it to be shattered with each thought of the life that now hung on her success. 

After so long she finally realized why most agents closed themselves from everyone or went insane. 


	34. Era and Noa: ♜: Shoulder rubs

It was another week where Intelligence was on overdrive, working not stop to identify and eliminate a new threat to the Empire. Era, for once, had caught a break from it–having just returned from a mission of her own. She hadn’t even seen Noa yet, she had been over at the Citadel for nearly two days at this point and Era had only landed the morning before. As always after a week of functioning on sheer willpower she had crashed almost as soon as she had put her stuff down and had woken up only a half hour ago. She glanced at the chrono, picking her cup of tea up off the counter, It was nearly ten at night and she was contemplating going down to headquarters to drag Noa home herself. For now she settled on taking up vigil on the couch, sipping her tea at methodical intervals as she flipped through a sketchbook she kept on the small end table and idly sketching as she waited. 

When the door finally hissed open she looked up, setting her cup down along with her pencil. “Hey.” 

Noa and her droid trudged in, though Noa seemed to perk up slightly when she heard her greeting. “Era, you’re home!” As she passed by Era caught at her wrist, holding her just long enough to give her a quick kiss. Noa disappeared down the hallway and reappeared a few minutes later, Intelligence uniform swapped out for fuzzy pants and a sweatshirt. She dropped beside Era with a groan, leaning back into the cushions and groaned. 

“Long day?” Era set her sketchbook aside as well, shifting on the couch so she could convince Noa to move closer to her. She brought her hands up to Noa’s shoulders, gently rubbing the tense and knotted muscles she felt there. “Sure feels like it,  _relax_.” 

Noa winced when she hit a particularly sore spot and Era eased up only for Noa’s hand to cover her own. “Please keep going, it feels good.” Noa sighed. “Be glad you weren’t in these past two days, it’s been crazy.” 

Era picked up kneading her shoulders again. “I heard a little bit when I checked in with Keeper, what happened?” 

She listened as Noa went through what had been going on at headquarters, broken up periodically by yawns and trailed off sentences as Noa started to drift off.  

“I wish they wouldn’t work you so long and hard.” Era stopped massaging, looping her arms around Noa loosely instead. Noa leaned back against Era with another little sigh. 

“That’s a lot coming from you, with how you come back from ops.” 

“I  _could_  sleep, I just don’t. There’s a difference.” Era pointed out before smiling softly when she realized Noa had very nearly fallen asleep. “Do you want to sleep out here or in the bedroom?”

“Bedroom..” Noa yawned with something about the room being too bright with the lightning that flashed across the sky. She started to push herself up when Era untangled herself first and picked Noa up without warning. With a startled yelp Noa’s arms wrapped around Era’s neck followed by an indignant: 

“I can  _walk_!” 

“I don’t think you’d make five steps from the couch.” Era’s remark when unprotested and sure enough by the time she reached the bedroom Noa had fallen asleep, head pillowed on her shoulder and breath soft on her neck. After setting her down gently and pulling the blankets up around her, Era curled up under the covers as well, rolling onto her elbows to press a kiss to Noa’s forehead and murmur a soft; “Goodnight.” before closing her own eyes. 


	35. Era and Noa: “Is that my shirt?”

“Noa are you almost ready?” Era glanced at the chrono on the wall, then back at the mirror to fix a twisted strap on her dress. They had plans to go out into the city tonight, first for dinner and then to see one of the operas that was being put on later that evening. They were going out without Noa’s droid, a fact that seemed to twist the droid’s circuits the wrong way. It was standing in the corner, doing what could only be described as sulking. It had already made one snarky comment about her dress and she had thrown her heeled shoe at it, which of course did no damage but had at least managed to keep any further comments from being thrown at her. 

“One second!” Noa called from their bedroom and there was a creak as the closet door was shoved shut. Era didn’t bother looking up when the bedroom door finally opened until she caught sight of Noa in the corner of the mirror. Her eyes widened and she turned  muttering a soft exclamation of “ _Damn_.” a little louder she said, “Is that my shirt?”

Noa didn’t need to answer, Era very well knew that was her shirt. It had been sitting in the back of her closet for a few years at this point. The last time she had worn it was…stars, she didn’t even know. But she didn’t care when the last time was that  _she_  wore it. 

“I hope that’s alright. It found it in the back of your closet. The whole dress thing wasn’t working out, yours all fit me weird.” 

Alright? It was more than alright by her. She had given Noa free reign over any clothes in her closet after Noa had decided she didn’t have anything she deemed fancy enough to wear for their night out. 

“Era?” Noa was smirking, she knew very damn well that she looked good. She also knew very damn well that it was very distracting. It wasn’t often that they got dressed up to go out, the hurricane that had become her closet earlier today was testament enough to that. 

“Sorry, I was listening, I swear.” Era blinked, smiling sheepishly. “You just look gorgeous.” 

Noa’s cheeks reddened, her smirk turning just as shy as Era’s. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you look just as stunning, but I’m not going to ask Grumpy Circuits over there, I think it’s plotting mutiny.”

They made their way to the door, grabbing their bags along the way and checking the time one last time. When the door hissed open to a light drizzle Era backtracked to grab an umbrella, saying; “Well I should probably warn you, you’re droid says my dress is the ugliest shade of purple to ever have existed.”

“It’s just mad that it isn’t joining in on the fun.” Noa ducked under the umbrella as soon as they were outside, looping her arm with Era’s. “Though speaking of color, I have no idea what color I’m wearing.” 

“Maroon.” Era supplied, adding. “Have I mentioned I  _really_  like you in that color? And that shirt?”

“You know, I might have got that impression. But the affirmation didn’t hurt.” Noa tilted her head to look up at her. “So what’s the story with this shirt?”

Era tried to think back to the most memorable thing she had done in that shirt. A lot of her going-out clothing, especially certain outfits, were notorious among the group of agents that had been in their academy graduating class from the exciting events that had unfolding while she had been wearing them. “I’m pretty sure I was wearing that shirt when I punched a Sith acolyte in the nose a few months before we reconnected.” She remembered with a laugh. “That’s definitely it, he made an off comment about me so I turned around and socked him in the nose.”

Noa started giggling, covering her mouth with her hand and shaking her head. “Punching Sith in the face, huh? That’s quite the story to live up to.” 

“Don’t live up to it. The ridges on a sith pureblood’s face hurt like hell to hit.” She lifted her hand as though inspecting her knuckles for the bruises that had darkened her skin after that event before glancing over at Noa with a beaming smile. “Our job tonight is to absolutely knock the city off it’s feet.” 

“Then let’s get going.” Noa returned her radiant smile and slid her hand down from the crook of Era’s elbow to take her hand, pulling her faster into the bright city streets, shining with fresh rainfall. 


	36. Era and Noa: Finding the other wearing their clothes

It was dark outside by the time Era returned to her dorm room, stuffing her hair up into a sloppy ponytail and nudging the door open with her hip. The first group of agent trainees had been sent through the physical tests of their training today and she had been one of the last students to go. The tests themselves hadn’t been bad, but she had set herself to commit as much as she could to memory so she could so she could relay it to Noa. 

“Sorry I’m so late, the testing took  _forever_.” Era tossed her duffle in the corner and looked up, pausing. Noa was sitting cross legged on Era’s bed, several pages of flimsi stacked in front of her, cuddled up in- “Is that my sweatshirt?” 

“No-well..yes.” Noa disappeared in a swath of sweatshirt as she yanked it over her head. “Sorry, it’s just really cold in your room and it was lying on the end of your bed.” Her voice was muffled by the sweatshirt, turning into another muffled sound as Era pushed it back over her head with a grin. 

“Leave it on if you’re cold, I don’t mind.” Her grin widened when Noa popped back out, hair ruffled and sticking up until she ran her hands through it. Some of the sheets of flimsi had started to flutter off the bed and Era grabbed them before settling down beside Noa. “So, I have tried to commit as much of the test to memory as possible.” She leaned across Noa to try and snatch a pen off desk, succeeding in knocking over a cup filled with pencils, pens and paint brushes. Pulling the cap off the pen she flipped through the pages, trying to find a sheet with enough room to scribble notes. All the sheets were filled with her handwriting. 

“You know you don’t need to do this.” Noa reminded Era for what must have been the millionth time. Era held up her hand, stilling further protest. 

“Yes, I do. Give me one second to scribble this down…”

Hours later when the chrono read past midnight, Noa was nearly asleep against Era’s shoulders and the cramped letters of her handwriting were starting to blur in front of Era’s eyes.

“I think you’ve got it, yeah?” Noa bobbed her head against Era’s shoulder as she put the sheets back into a folder. “If it counts,  _I_ think you’ve got it.” 

Ever since Noa had voiced her concerns about not having her droid to help her see during the tests they had been working to find a work around. They had practiced sparring, gone through the layout of the training rooms hundreds of times and just today gone through the different things she should expect. As long as the test administrators didn’t pull anything funny she should have nothing to worry about. 

“It goes how it goes, I guess.” Noa muffled a yawn, sliding off the bed and plodding over to the door. She had almost stepped through the doorway when she froze. “Oh, you’re sweatshirt-”

“Keep it.” Era didn’t look up from stuffing the folder into her desk and clearing up the writing utensils she had knocked to the floor until she heard Noa squeak what sounded like  _What?_ She looked up with a smile and a raised eyebrow. “Sweatshirt, keep it. It’s cold out.”

Noa wrapped her arms around herself, the excess sleeve dangling over her hands. “Okay…” She cleared her throat. “Uh, thank you Erabelle, for everything.” 

“You’re welcome.” Era’s smile faded at her rather ominous tone. “I’ll see you tomorrow, you’ll do great.”

**

As it turned out their masterful plan to thwart the system hadn’t gone as well as they had hoped. Six years later, though, things had worked themselves out. The door of a Kaas City apartment was palmed open and Era slipped inside, met with darkness except for the blue glow of the holovision. “ _Wow_ , it’s dark in here.” She hit the light switch with her shoulder as she shrugged off her rain soaked Intelligence jacket. “Sorry I’m home so late, Keeper was on a roll with the mission briefing tonight.Thought she’d never stop.”

“Was it dark in here? I wouldn’t know.” Came the amused reply from the couch, where a pile of blankets moved and Noa untangled herself from her makeshift nest. “No matter about the time, you can still come finish this holodrama with me. It sounds super cheesy.” 

Era kicked off her boots, dimming the lights and pulling out her braid as she made her way over to the couch and shaking out her hair. Before she plopped down on the couch the familiar, if faded logo on Noa’s sweatshirt caught her eye. “Is that my sweatshirt from the academy?”

“It might be. It’s super comfortable.” Noa leaned into Era as she settled on the couch. 

“How is this thing even still around? How is it still  _big_  on you? That thing is six years old, if not more.” Era pulled at the bunch of stretched fabric that still hung over Noa’s hands. 

“It was big on  _you,_ of course it won’t fit me.” Noa reminded her, resting her head on Era’s shoulder. “Has it really been six years?”

“Six years and counting since you stole my sweatshirt.” She rested her cheek on top of Noa’s head and sighed. “We’re getting old, Noa.”

“You’re twenty-six Era, shut up.” Noa laughed, smacking Era with the extra sleeve material. “It feels like we’ve known each other longer than six years.”

Era readjusted herself on the couch and they rearranged until they were both buried under the blankets, Era’s arms wrapped around Noa. Noa pressed play on the holodrama and before settling into the peaceful quiet between them Era whispered; “I like you in my sweatshirt.”

“Good, because you aren’t getting it back now.” As if to prove a point, Noa snuggled deeper into the fabric. “It’s mine now.” 


	37. Era and Noa: “Will you marry me?”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My FAVORITE prompt I've ever written

Sunset fell across the beaches of Rishi, brilliant orange light flooding in the glass doors leading out of Era and Noa’s room. Era paused in front of the doors, frowning slightly as she fastened a necklace around her neck. She and Noa were supposed to be going out, but Noa had been gone for hours at this point and hadn’t told her when she was coming back. 

Era drifted between the main room and the bathroom, pausing by her holocom multiple times before leaving to go fix one thing or another. But eventually she ran out of curls to pin back or dress wrinkles to smooth out so she stepped outside, standing just outside the doors to let the salty ocean breeze wash over her. 

“Era!” She must have zoned out because she wasn’t sure when Noa had appeared just by the glass door but there she was, smile like the sun itself. “Come down to the beach with me!” 

“When did you…” Era shook her head, smiling and interlocking her fingers with Noa’s when her hand found hers. “Never mind, let’s go.”

The followed the stone pathway, hand in hand until it faded into the soft, white sands of the beach. The breeze was a little stronger here, just enough to stir their hair and cool off the worst of the day’s heat. the most intense tones of orange had faded into the deep purple of nightfall and the stars were just beginning to wink awake overhead. 

Noa didn’t answer any of Era’s questions about where they were going with anything other than a “you’ll see”. Era allowed herself to be led along without protest. It seemed that Noa had memorized the path she was taking, the droid wasn’t with them and she was moving with a pace and confidence that wasn’t usually there. 

“Are you ever going to tell me where we’re going?” Era asked with a laugh as they completely left behind the last group of people on the beach. They were down by a cove where the beach merged into the jungle just after a rocky alcove. They had come down here for the peace and quiet many times this week, but never at this time of night. Noa stopped Era by turning around and placing both hands on her upper arms. “We’re here, but wait here.”

Noa backed up slowly, holding up her hands as if to reiterate  _wait_  before disappearing behind the rocks. Era’s curiosity was piqued, though she waited patiently, digging her toes into the sand and turning her eyes out to the water. 

“Era.” Her eyes snapped back to Noa and the uncharacteristic shyness in her voice. Noa held out her hands and with a shock Era realized she had taken off the mask she usually wore over where her eyes would have been, had she been fully human. Noa without her mask was a privilege granted only around each other in the privacy of their home. “Come with me.”

“Okay…” Era took her hands, padding after her around the jutting formation of rock. She stopped dead, a little gasp stealing her breath as soon as she passed the last rock. In the alcove, twined in the flora that bordered the sand and looped on the rocks closing it in where lantern-like lights that cast a pale glow in the vivid highlights and shadows of the sunset. Lining either side of a pathway were beautiful flowers, their fragrance mixing with the salty air. “ _Noa_.” She breathed out, eyes wide. 

Noa tugged her down the path, into the glow of the lights. Era looked around her, eyes going a touch wider as she began to recognize certain flowers. “Are they…”

“Native to every planet we’ve gone through together.” Noa finished softly, thumbs brushing across Era’s knuckles. 

“It’s beautiful.” Era blinked rapidly as she took in the flora surrounding them, memories flitting by quick as a wink with each planet she picked out. Dromund Kaas, Taris, there were even things from Hoth and Tatooine, beautiful in their hardiness the way others were delicate.

The end of the path was lit brightest of all, the lights joining from the rocks and jungle. It was bare of flowers here except for those native to Risha, curling around the rocks and barely touching the sand. Noa took a deep breath, turning her face to Era’s. “We’ve been through a lot together, some of it worse than anyone should ever need to go through.” Era brought one hand up to brush at her watering eyes and Noa squeezed the hand she still held. “But we’ve made it through. I want to keep making it through with you, there’s so much left for us to explore and I want to do it with you by my side. So, Era, will you marry me?”

Era was nodded before Noa finished her sentence, tears rolling freely down her cheeks. For a few precious seconds she was too overcome to say anything, do anything, other than nod her head with a hand frozen over her mouth.

 Noa nervously laughed, shifting like she was going to take a step back. “Please tell me you’re nodding or something…”

Era flailed for her voice, her hand moving away from her mouth to fluttering in the air as she willed words back to her. “Definitely nodding.” she choked out with a little laugh. “Definitely saying yes. Stars,  _yes_.”

Within seconds they were in each other’s arms, stumbling back and around in the sand. Noa reached up, hands gentle one Era’s face to draw her down into a tender, lingering kiss. Her fingertips brushed across her wet cheek as she pulled back. “Tears?”

Era slid her arm around Noa’s waist, pulling her back close. This close she could see the fading orange light playing with the shadows of purple and shining white. A piece of art. “Because I love you so much.” she murmured. “And you are the best thing that has happened to me.” She rested her forehead against Noa’s, voice soft enough to barely be heard over the  _whoosh_  of the waves. 

Noa lifted her hand to push a stray curl of hair from Era’s face, fingers grazing across the thin white scars where her cybernetics used to be. “Stars, I love you.”

“I can’t wait to explore the galaxy with you.”

The breeze stirred to life around them, swirling the sand around their feet sending the sweet scent of the flowers wrapping around them. Noa drew Era back down for another kiss.

“It starts here.” 


	38. Era and Noa: 1. Giggling like a child, without a trace of past sadness

Era sat cross legged on the floor of the room she had called her studio, now split with Noa’s droid when they were home, a blank canvas propped in front of her. On the other side of the room sat a larger canvas, one that was nearly as long as she was tall, a mostly finished landscape of a storm lit Kaas City long dried but unfinished. It was supposed to be finished well over a week ago for a Kaasian noble that had been interested in a purchase, but horrible headaches and problematic vision from her damaged cybernetics had kept her away from her paints and brushes until she couldn’t have hoped to finish it. Even now, with the headaches abating enough for her to move around the house and vision somewhat clearer, she didn’t want to risk botching the painting. So it sat, and she had a smaller, untouched canvas laid out in front of her. 

She heard the door open with an exaggerated slowness so that it wouldn’t make too much noise–Noa was still working for Intelligence for now as they solidified their plans for traveling–just as she was laying down her first layer of paint. “How was your day?” She put down her brush gently to shift around to look into the hallway. 

“Good, it’s nice to see you up. How’re you doing?” Noa came into the studio, leaning down to give Era a quick greeting kiss before glancing in the general direction of where her canvas was. “Working on the cityscape?”

Era gave a slight shake of her head. “Better, but no. I’m thinking of painting one of the red and yellow flowers we, well  _I_ , saw the other day.” She caught at Noa’s wrist. “Do you want to paint with me? I don’t know how well teaching would go, but..” She shrugged. 

“If I won’t disrupt you, then sure.” Noa smiled. “Just let me change out of my uniform, I think Keeper would kill me if I got paint on it.”

“It would certainty spruce it up a bit, change the monotony of all that grey.” Era pointed out, standing to go over to a large shelf that held a multitude of paint bottles, canvases and brushes. 

“Not all of us are crazy enough to wear white, Era.” Noa called from down the hall, laughter in her voice. The notorious uniform was shoved in the back of her closet, right alongside the other just as boring, just as grey uniforms of the other agents and Noa knew it. 

“ _I’m_ just a trendsetter.” She said as soon as she heard Noa reenter the room, setting down the bin full of paints she had pulled down. “Just you wait, in a few years everyone will be doing it.” 

“Anyone who wants to be unpractical.” Noa shot back, settling down next to her. She felt around until she felt where Era had set down the canvas, shifting it until she liked its placement. Era had banned the droid from the room when she was painting soon after an incident that had involved a canvas being knocked over and paint going everywhere. There were still paint flecks on the floor if she looked hard enough, so Noa was working more off of touch than anything. She had assured that she didn’t mind. 

“Impractical or no, what do you want to paint?” Era brought the bin of paints closer to her, rifling through to right any bottles that had fallen over and shifting the ones she had put back in their wrong spots. “Or I could finish talking about  color theory..”

“Stars,  _no_. No more color theory.” Noa shook her head furiously, pointing a dry paintbrush at her. “It doesn’t work if I can’t see the colors.” She kept the paintbrush leveled at Era, flicking it as if to ward of her thoughts of the art lesson that had taken up most of a stormy day. “But, could I  _maybe_  try painting you?” 

Era snatched the paintbrush as it almost whacked her in the nose. “If you want to.” 

Noa beamed at her and plucked the paintbrush back out of her hand, reaching for the bin of colored paints. With a fair amount of digging and many “it’s to the left, no you’re  _other_  left. Okay now up.” Noa had a small army of paint bottles laid out in front of her, paintbrush in hand. They had shifted positions, Era was sitting in front of Noa with the canvas leaned against her knees.

 “Okay, sit still.” Noa used her hand with the paintbrush to feel around the canvas for the edges before dipping it in the paint. She brought her other hand up to Era’s face, following the contours of her brows and cheeks until she found her jaw. “I don’t know where to start, but here seems good.”

“Whatever you thinks best.” Era suggested, fighting back a smile. She brought her expression to something neutral, sitting as still as she could. By the time Noa’s fingers brushed across her lips she couldn’t help but smile. 

“Era!” Noa reprimanded, freezing with the paintbrush mid stroke. 

She pressed her lips together, pushing away the grin with a snickered; “sorry.” 

The neutral expression lasted even less time when Noa’s hand was exploring the other side of her face, brushing just light enough tickle her neck. Era pulled away, starting to giggle. 

“Erabelle Torven!” Noa exclaimed exasperatedly as Era rocked forward, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with laughter. It wasn’t long before the ridiculousness of having her hand splayed across her girlfriend’s face seemed to register and she joined in the laughter. “You’re a terrible model.” She scolded, flicking her fingers at her. 

Era yelped between giggles as cold, wet paint landed on her cheek, jerking back. “Noa!” She reached over to her abandoned palette, dipping her fingers in the yellow paint that hadn’t yet dried. With a mischievous smirk she flicked her fingers, sending paint splattering onto Noa. Noa spluttered, bringing her hand up to wipe at the paint, which just smeared it across her cheek. 

“Oh it’s on.” 

They both scrambled for paintbrushes and their palettes’ throwing arms up to avoid brushes full of paint and giggling like children as they smeared paint all over each others faces. Before long they were on their backs, clutching their stomachs and tears in their eyes from laughing so hard. 

“You..look..like..” A new set of giggles interrupted Era’s words. “a nexu…with..all..those.. _stripes_.” 

“A nexu? Of all the animals?” She reached out a hand to shove Era’s cheek, leaving a blue hand print behind. “I thought you were an  _artist_.”

“ _I_ think it looks marvelous.” Era drew another stripe for payback, biting back a snort of laughter. Nexu was stretching the definition of animals. Maybe a nexu if she turned her head enough. “Though I probably look fantastic, given the master painter that used my face as their canvas.”

“Always a pleasure to spread my talent.” Noa returned with a grin, propping herself on her elbow. “Let’s go wash this off, I can feel it drying.”

“I think the look suits you.” Era threw her hands up in front of her face as more paint was sent flying by a paintbrush. “I surrender!” She scrambled up, reaching out a paint stained hand to Noa and pulling her up as well. “One second,” She searched for the black paint, put a dollop on her finger and then smooshed it onto Noa’s nose. “There you go,  _now_ the look is complete.” 

Their giggling picked up again when they ran into Noa’s droid, its explanation to Noa of how they looked sending them into another fit that had them half collapsed against the wall, even as the droid gave several not amused beeps that rose in volume and ferocity when it rolled into the mess of a room it shared with Era’s paintings. 

Several face washes and hair scrubs later Era looked into the mirror with a frown, brushing at a wet strand of her pale hair. “Noa I think you turned my hair purple.” They stared at each other silently for several seconds before giggling again, smiling so wide it hurt and laughing so hard they shook. 


	39. Rielay and Esrin: “Well I fucked up again.”

Over the years Esrin had become far to adept at reading the tones in Rielay’s voice. Her tone over to words in particular: “Esrin…” followed by some form of endearment. 

That combination only meant one thing: trouble. 

Sometimes it was: “Esrin, honey, I  _might_ have made one of Nar’s gang leaders upset, my job is going to take a bit longer”. Sometimes it was, “Es, I love you  _but_ I fucked up and now Republic customs won’t let me off planet for an extra day. Apparently telling exactly where they can stick their regulations doesn’t go as well as you’d think.” 

There was never a combination of those two words, spoken in that  _specific_ tone of voice that didn’t either take a year or two off his life expectancy or make him roll his eyes. This time was no different. 

He had  _thought_ that since they were on Coruscant–in part for a series of important debriefings he had been called to, part to reintroduce Rielay back to Sirixa as something more in their little family than the smuggler who had helped her on Balmorra–that perhaps they could have a few days of trouble-free calm. 

He should’ve known better than that as soon as Rielay had pulled a spare key for Emeldir’s apartment out from some obscure hiding place that involved using him as a leverage point with the promise that Emeldir had it there for a reason. He didn’t doubt that Rielay’s fellow captain had no issue with her crashing in his apartment, he was just more concerned with the mischief in his girlfriend’s eyes and what the neighbors might’ve thought had they looked out their windows. 

When his holocomm rang he had just stepped into said apartment, the noise from lines of speeder traffic below muffling as the door closed. What he expected when he saw Rielay’s holofrequency, he wasn’t sure. 

“Esrin, baby, are you home?” Ever so sweet–too sweet–Rielay asked. Convieniently audio-only Esrin couldn’t even peek at where she was. Stars help him. 

“I  _am_.” Without preamble he leaped right to the only assumption he could make. “What did you do?” 

“What did  _I_ do?” If indigence wasn’t Rielay’s number one deflection tactic for her bad decisions he might have believed her, for a moment. Faux sweetness mixed with innocence saturated her voice and he just  _really_ hoped she hadn’t made the Black Sun or Justicar angry again. “ _But_ since you asked…you know how I’m working on fixing the ramp on the Promise?” 

The Promise…in the Coruscant spaceport, far out of any gang territory, where she had been making small repairs and upgrades on the freighter twice as old as she was to keep herself busy in the interim when he was caught in meetings and Siri was in school. Unless the Black Sun had returned to her ship on a three year grudge then it had to be something else. “..yeah?” 

“Well,” She drew out the word a few extra syllables. “I fucked up. Again. The ramp’s stuck and I can’t get it unstuck.” 

Esrin couldn’t bite back the–frankly rather relieved–amused snort that escaped him. “Okay. Can you get out?” 

Peevishly, any and all sheepishness gone she mumbled: “No.” 

He was  _definitely_ failing to keep the amusement from his voice now and he knew it was going to get him in trouble. “Don’t you have over ways to get out?” 

That peevishness was directed at him now in full force, snapping through the holofrequency like a wip. “Unless I want to shoot my one escape pod through the side of this fucking hangar,  _no.”_

Grabbing the key for his speeder off the counter where he had put it and outwardly chuckling now Esrin shook his head, through he knew Rielay couldn’t see it. “I’ll be there in ten.” 

When he punched in the code for the  _Promise’s_ hangar he walked into Rielay drawing on every creative curse in her inventory, trying to squirm her way out from under the nearly-closed ramp. She had her feet braced on the lip of her ship, almost like she was trying to push the ramp down with her body weight. 

Hearing the hangar door hiss open she tripped her head back to look at him upside-down, red curls going haywire and a smile splitting her cheeks that were pink with exertion. “Hey!” 

“Hey you.” Inspecting the scene with unabashed humor and no small amount of confusion as to how she got into the predicament into the first place, he toyed with how best no to wound her pride when it came to her ship. “How can I help?” 

Squirming some more, she had down to the middle of her back off the ramp and hanging over the several feet of worryingly empty space, she strained for something just out of her reach. “Can you reach over here? There should be a release pin. I almost had this damn thing up all the way until it stuck, and now it won’t go up  _or_ down.” 

He walked over, scanning the underside of the ship until he found what she was trying to reach, a metal pin her finger tips were just too far to brush against. Before he reached for her she caught the strap of his armor in one hand and tugged him down to bonk their lips together in something resembling a kiss before saying–ever so innocently like it was no issue–”Just be prepared to catch me when you pull the pin.” 

That gave him pause, meeting her upside-down look incredulously. “I’m sorry,  _what_?” 

Rolling her eyes, Rielay twisted some more and instinctively his hand went to support behind her shoulder blades as she made a grab at the pin and missed. “That pin released the ramp. It’s going to fall a good five feet, I’d like to not hit the ground with it.” 

With a long suffering look Esrin cautiously pulled the pin, snagging Rielay under the arms and pulling her off the ramp as it clattered to the floor, easily supporting her weight. 

With some dexterity Rielay maneuvered herself so she could lock her legs around Esrin’s waist, loop her arms across his shoulders, and kiss him in earnest this time. “My  _hero_.” The inflection was all affection, missing all the peevish sarcasm from earlier, said with a grin instead of an implied scowl. 

She was a mess–red hair flying every which way out of it’s ponytail, her white button shirt stained with oil and the familiar smell of metal and engine grease clinging to her–but she was his mess, and he couldn’t help but smile back.


	40. Rielay and Esrin: “I’m not leaving.”

They were in a predicament. 

Now, that was an uncommon thing to find oneself in when engaging on any sort of mission with Rielay, predicaments were part of the fun. 

Frankly this was one predicament the smuggler may have found herself enjoying–pressed against Esrin’s chest as she was–were it not for the biting cold and the line between “just tough enough to be fun” and “dangerous” blurring more with each passing second. 

Rielay and Esrin were on Illum alongside Emeldir and Risha, answering a call to aid against the Empire’s mounting attack. For Emeldir it was a job, probably part of his whole hero shtick he was running. For Esrin the Republic military had called him in without choice for the first time since Corellia. 

Rielay herself tagged along, of course, for the snow and feeling like her nose was going to fall off her face because clearly she  _hadn’t_  had her fill of those things on her jobs to Hoth. But she was an extra hand, an extra set of blasters. And the same Republic bosses who had called on Emeldir had sent a, decidedly more reluctant, request for her as well. Something about wanting both amazing halves of their smuggler saviors to save the day once again. 

Or, that’s what it should have said, she didn’t read it.  

There was nothing hard about the job–it was all shuffling around in the snow shooting at Imps and disabling their tech–until now.  _Now_  there was a problem. 

She and Esrin were given a different mission objective than Emeldir and Risha–they were to blaze their way into a storage holdout for Imperial supplies and cut them off at their source. Easy enough, until it wasn’t. 

As it turns out, fighting in a cave made predominantly of ice and snow using blasters filled with smoldering plasma bolts worked a  _little less_  than it would anywhere else. 

“Take out the big droid, take it  _out!”_ Rielay shouted, hunching down into herself as the crystal growth her back was pressed against exploded into sharps just to her left. She winced as some of the flyaway shards caught her cheek, ripping through the cloth covering the lower half of her face. Rolling to the other side of the crystal she fired several shots at one of the stars-damned droids, dropping it in a shower of sparks. 

The heavy thump of Esrin’s blaster canon firing off muffled her words, stalling the largest droid’s movements but not stopping it. Whatever the Imps built their droids out of was too fucking strong. “It’s not budging–” There was the whine of the droid’s gears and Esrin’s tone shifted, his body automatically moving towards her. “Rielay,  _move!”_

She didn’t question it, throwing herself out from behind her cover and sliding across the slick floor towards the opposite side of the cave. She threw an arm over her head as the droid’s turrets roared to life, yelping in shock when she nearly crashed into Esrin. One of his arms caught her around the waist, the other shielding her head as he hunched over her, shielding her with his bulk as the floor started to shake dangerously. 

An earsplitting crack and suddenly snow was all around them, bits of ice glancing off her coat and back. The whole room began to tremble, throwing them around and without warning they were falling. 

Rielay’s pained shout as her right arm twisted under her was lost in the noise, the breath knocked out of her lungs as, despite his attempt to twist out of the way, part of Esrin’s body weight still landed on her. Despite the ache spreading from her fingers up through her shoulder she didn’t move, still shielded under Esrin as the aftershocks faded.

“Esrin!” She squirmed around in his grip until she could look at him, a gloved hand clinging to the straps of his armor. “What knocked us down? You weren’t hit by the falling ice were you?” her hand not clutched close–her cybernetic arm, she couldn’t move the fingers any longer and she hoped desperately that they were just frozen from the cold–scrabbled across the plaistoid, looking for any damage. 

“I’m fine, it just glanced off and knocked me off balance. All this packed down snow is slippery.” Esrin’s hands caught her attention by settling on either side of her face, forcing her to look at him and cutting off her panic. “ _Rielay_ , a small piece just glanced off.” His eyes–ever watchful when they fought together–zeroed in on the way her other arm hung close to her chest, widening behind his snow goggles. “Rie…” 

Taking the first deep breath since the ice had started falling and flinching as the nerve sensors in the tech fired off Rielay struggled to a seated position and shook her head against the concern. Out of the corner of her good eye she saw the broken bodies of the droids under a pile of ice. “I landed funny on it when the ice came down, that’s all.” She looked around the cave, at the splintered ice where the roof had caved, at the mass of ice, rock, and snow that blocked their way out. “We need to find a way out.” 

Esrin rolled to his feet, following her eyes upwards just as warily, making his way over to the wall of debris that trapped them. He ran his hand along it, searching for…something. She dug around in her pocket for her holocomm, setting it on the snow and sending out a signal. It hovered, neither connecting or disconnecting. “I might be able to get a distress signal out.”

“Rie,” She missed him the first time, too busy tapping and fretting with the holocomm until it gave one pathetic ring. In the split second the connection lasted she punched out a distress signal, pinging their location. 

“Hopefully that will reach the base camp or some patrol around here, otherwise it’s going to be a  _long_ few hours until they realize we’re gone.” 

“ _Rie_. Come here.” 

“What–?” Standing she stumbled over to where Esrin was, standing by a hole in the debris between two chunks of ice, not much above his head. It was maybe a little bit larger than she was around and she could see the stars and the aurora borealis of the sky shining through. 

It was cold–the chill bit through her jacket and gloves now that they weren’t fighting, her wedding ring on it’s chain around her neck felt like it was burning a cold hole below her collar bones. But the air dropped another few degrees as she realized his idea just before he voiced it. 

“If I lift you up you might be able to squeeze through there. The way post is only a klick from here and maybe our speeder is still behind those banks.” 

“Absolutely not.” He looked down at her, surprised at the bite in her voice. “I am  _not_ leaving.” 

Her husband looked between her and the escape, the roots of exasperation written in the lines of his posture. “There’s no guarantee that our holo signal went through, but if you can get out then you can find  _help_. The base will have the sort of equipment to remove this.” 

Shaking from more than just the cold–tremors wracking up and down her arms and chattering her teeth she shook her head vehemently. “And if this thing caves while I’m gone? If it gives?” 

He had to understand, he had to see the building caving on Corellia, had to see the ash and dust rising as she had, had to see why she needed to stay. 

She may not be able to hold up the entire cave but she could damn well try. 

If he saw the root of her fear–the fear that had to be somewhere rooted in those memories of his–he didn’t react to it. His voice was slow, gentle in the way it always was when he was trying to talk her down into seeing reason. “We both have a better chance of getting out if you go and find help Rielay, stars knows I can’t fit through there and widening the space any isn’t going to happen.” 

Stomping on her fear and rolling it into a tightly coiled ball of frustration she ground out; “I’m  _not going_.” 

Esrin pushed out a huff of air that was as close to an exasperated sigh as he could muster–so he  _must_ understand where she was coming from. He opened his mouth to protest and she cut him off, yanking her scarf down around her neck. 

“Read my lips Esrin,  _I’m not leaving you_ and there’s nothing you can do to change by mind.” Gritting her teeth she watched as Esrin sighed, gently reaching down to pull the scarf back over her nose. 

“Alright.” 

Turning on her heel she stalked away to snatch the holocomm up, it’s blue light pulsing as it searched for signal. “I do have an idea.” Stopping by the hole she inspected it, then looked at Esrin with a sharp look. “If you lift me up I can maybe get a better signal. But I am  _not_  leaving the vicinity of this cave.” 

Already he was nodded along with her plan, crouching to let her scramble onto his shoulders. She locked her ankles across his chest, a warning in her voice. “Don’t even  _think_ about pushing me all the way through to get out.” 

“I won’t, and wouldn’t.” Esrin soothed, trying his best to keep her steady as she squeezed her upper body through the hole with her blind side unaided by the touch of her cybernetic arm. Bracing her elbow on the side of the debris–she wasn’t sure she’d be able to get out fully anyways, it was already a tight space around her–she flung her arm out as far as it would go and breathed a sigh of relief as the signal finally started going through. 

Pushing her luck she tested an actual call to the way point base, tapping her hand excitedly on the ground as it went through. “Captain Taqq, we read you’re location…” 

–

It took the Republic forces another two hours Rielay approximated to reach their location through the snow and clear the debris without collapsing the entire structure and another after that to reach the main base. 

The warmth–if it could even be called warmth, probably more accurately  _lesser cold_ –was welcome after the cold had sank deep into her bones even through her thermal-wear, turning her fingers to stone and her lips blue. 

Esrin, however, was incredibly warm without his armor and out of the chill as she snuggled back against his chest. Whether it was the twi’lek’s naturally higher core temperature or his larger and denser stature she didn’t know, but she was hardly complaining. 

On their shared cot (Esrin’s by definition but no one had questioned it when they had walked in together their first night here and from every night onward), nested in the blankets they could scrounge up, Rielay curled her knees closer to her chest , turning her head to rest in the crook between his neck and shoulder. His hands–rubbing warmth back into her arms, careful to avoid the sensitive and wrapped area where her cybernetic arm had been removed for repair–paused, his arms settling around her instead. 

“What’re you thinking about?” 

Rielay griped, “About how much this sucks. I thought Hoth was bad…I think I have frostbite in places I didn’t know could  _get_ frostbite.” 

While Esrin chuckled softly, pressing a tender kiss to the top of her head, he didn’t buy her gripe. “And what are you really thinking about?” 

Humming indecisively, Rielay tucked a sweater-pawed hand under her chin, curled tighter into herself. “About how dangerous these missions are.” When Esrin made a soft noise to cue her that he was listening, asking for more, really, she sighed. “On Hoth I was caught out in a storm and could’ve died, Emeldir was caught in the same storm and was nearly killed by whatever creature attacked him. Risha tells me they nearly froze to death when the White Maw dumped them in a chasm…then today…” 

A near silent whine escape her and she hid her face closer against Esrin’s neck, feeling his arms tighten around her. “I just keep thinking about how these things wouldn’t have phased me once but now…I don’t have the stomach for it anymore. For this game, hoping I don’t lose you or Emeldir or  _me_.” 

He was quiet for a moment, mulling over her words. “Are you…getting tired of the smuggling scene?” 

She shrugged, saying quietly, “I don’t know. I…don’t know. Today just…shook me.” 

“Alright,” Esrin didn’t push her further, giving her a comforting squeeze, though his question still hung between them. “Emeldir said that most of the fighting from here on out should be fairly straightforward–Imperial bases and such. No more caves in our future.” 

That brought a laugh from her, though it lacked it’s usual luster. “Good, I don’t want to see another cave for a long time. Every time I go in one it’s got somethin’ bad in it.” 


	41. Rielay and Esrin: A Study In Patience

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Captain Rielay Taqq has dealt with Hutts before, she’s dealt with scenarios of threatened destruction more times than she should probably count. Putting the two together should be a piece of cake…but as it turns out adding family to the mix is a bit like herding cats.

“Emeldir, what’s going on down there?” 

Waiting with bated breath as her–no,  _Emeldir’s,_ this wasn’t her ship–holocomm hissed and buzzed with static and chaos from the other end of the line, Rielay leaned her elbows onto the main control frame. 

“Uh,” Her shoulders heaved in a sigh of relief when the familiar cadence of Emeldir’s voice broke through the static. “There’s a large fissure opening underneath us. But it’s fine, we’re fine…” His voice cut off for a moment and despite the fact that Rielay couldn’t do anything from her– _no,_ his damn it. His ship. Zasharr was flying hers while Emeldir and his crew were on the ground–ship she was gritting her teeth against a few choice words when he cut back in, braced like she was ready to leap into action. “–make another run? They’re launching now–” 

“And there isn’t enough time to reach the people stuck on the outskirts of the fissure.” Rielay supplied in the wake of the static, gritting out through her teeth: “So you’re standing over a massive fissure and my husband is probably either by the giant fissure or on the outskirts with no evac?” 

“Mhmm…” Emeldir hovered over giving an answer, torn between sniping something back or trying to ease her worry. He went with neither, mumbling something that vaguely resembled a guilty: “Yes m'am” but really sounded like: “Yes’m.” 

“I swear on the stars, Emeldir Deryn you are leading me to an early grave.” 

Her snarled comment fell on deaf ears as the channel cut out completely and she glared at the empty comm display, fingers clenching over the controls before she snapped up the ramp and activated the engine and thrusters. The  _Phoenix_ whirled to life around her, rumbling with far more power than her own ship had ever seen thanks to Risha’s additions over the last few years, and an inquisitive noise came from the central area of the ship. 

“We’re making another run, Fashira! Should be the last one before this all goes to hell!” She shouted over her shoulder, perhaps with far more force than warranted. 

Already she could see columns of smoke rising from outside the viewport, large rock formations tipping and shaking with the rocking of the earth. So help her if anyone in her ragtag family got hurt on this Hutt controled rock…

“Got it Rielay, I’ll prep for landing again!” Fashira called back, voice cooling her agitated nerves into simple steam. She didn’t sound worried, but then again Fashira never seemed worried. The cathar oozed calm, the perfect crew member to temper Rielay’s rising frustration. 

Needing an outlet for her growing nerves she smacked her hand into the comm device, poking around for the contact for the  _Promise_. “We’re making one last run, make it count. Get my ship off planet without any scratches or else.” 

“Sure thing, Red.” Zasharr’s voice snapped over the holo, reverberating with suppressed laughter. “No scratches or scorch marks or it’s on me.” 

“Count on it.” Rielay growled before her voice softened. “Stay safe out there, got it?” 

Before they cut the feed entirely and made for their landing, swooping down close to the surface that was more spitting lava and less solid land with each passing second, Zasharr actually laughed. “Such a worrier now, Captain. Will do.” 

“Blame the maternal instincts then Zash. Don’t be giving me snark.”

She damn well would worry, this whole planet was splintering beneath them and her entire family was to some degree flying straight towards the growing patches of red hot lava. And they had wanted to leave her behind,  _far_ behind. Home on Corellia behind. 

It didn’t matter, she had plenty of reason to worry and it was well within her rights to do so. 

‘But Rielay…’ the protests had rung, carefully spoken. 'Dont you think you should sit this one out? For both your sakes?’

As if being a few months into her pregnancy made her less likley to let those she cared about be stupid without her there to make sure they all stayed together and mostly in one piece. 

No she very well would not “sit this one out.”.

She had stressed, and argued, and bargained, and negotiated and bargained some more to her own band of worriers to let her fly her ship. Deryn’s ship. A ship. Something that vaguely resembled a ship.

She had won in the end. Won herself the pilot ship of the Phoenix. And she still had plenty of reason to worry and she would continue do so.

“We all clear?” Rielay called back to Fashira, bouncing her hand up and down on the controls as she waited for a response. Knowing that the entire planet was splitting beneath them–where somewhere Deryn was on the ground by it and her husband was somewhere  _else_ in the entire mess with no contact–should have had her stressed. And she  _was_ stressed, but she hid it well under a spitting frustration. 

“All set.” Fashira appeared on the bridge, eyeing the smoke gathering below their flight path, then fixing her knowing eyes on Rielay and the way her own eye was glaring out the viewport. “Rielay, want me to take this run?” 

That glare snapped to Fashira in all its fiery glory, though her voice spluttered like she hadn’t fully processed the question. “W-what? No! I’m flying, you take the controls on that side.” She twitched her hand towards the far side of the control board. “And make sure we don’t crash.” 

Ceding to her unmovable captain, Fashira took the the controls with only a slightly irritated huff. “Esrin isn’t going to be happy if–”

“Esrin,” Rielay growled. “is in no position to be anything but damn well happy I don’t show up with my blaster charged and my finger on the trigger to shoot the sons of Hutts who thought this was a good idea.” 

“I…” The cathar started before shaking her head with a shake of her head and an audible sigh. “Alright, you know what your doing.” The exasperated ‘ _most likely’_ hung off the end unspoken.

As it turned out flying back down towards the surface of a planet that was rocking and tumbling to pieces was easier in theory than it was in practice. The turbulence threw the  _Phoenix_ back and forth in the air, making Rielay grit her teeth as she played a delicate balancing game with the thruster strength to avoid the approaching surface. 

“Alright evac group zerek-ten get ready to load, it’s going to be a tight squeeze.” Releasing her hold on the comm button she waited in the static for the response from the Republic soldier in charge of organizing the evacuees. 

“Understood Captain Taqq. Preparing for loading.” 

Bringing her ship down for a soft landing was another study in patient maneuvering, filled with her holding her breath and biting her lip in concentration until her ship’s landing gears  _thunked_ down on the grassy clearing they had for landing extra evac ships. Even with an experienced pilot’s skill the freighter still rocked back and forth jarringly and Rielay made a disgruntled noise in the back of her throat as she activated the ship’s top shielding against falling debris and lowered the ramp. 

Time for the chaos of trying to organize more terrified people than her ship could technically hold. With a deep breath Rielay made to step out onto the main floor of the  _Phoenix_ before Fashira stopped her with a hand on her arm. “I’ll take the front, you take organizing them where you want them. The ramp got pretty rowdy last run.”

She couldn’t argue with that, she still had the smarting spot on her cheekbone from someone’s elbow meeting her face. Nodding, she bounded over to the storage crates she had pushed into the corner and clambered on top of one as Fashira rushed to the ramp. 

“They’re coming in Captain!”

The first wave of people came rushing in and Rielay cupped her hand around her mouth, gesturing with her other one. “Head down the hall and take your first right, it’s going to be a tight squeeze so pack in tight…” 

It continued much the same, rumbles shaking up through the floor as she shouted over the rising noise where to go and what to do until her voice was hoarse. At some point in the blur of activity someone had shoved a very young and very unhappy baby into her arms and not long after that she had found herself with another lost, young child shunted into her care. While the baby cried at the increasing frequency of rumbling and the  _thumping_ of debris ricocheting of the ship’s shields the other young child–thankfully old enough to be on her own two feet–clung to her leg. 

By the  _stars_ this was going to be harder than she thought. 

Fashira finally appeared, the ramp easing closed behind her and the last of their evacuees squeezing in. Almost all the floor space of the  _Phoenix_ was filled with people squished in like sardines except for the bridge, kept blessedly clear for her own sanity when flying them out of here. 

She ran her free hand over the trembling child clinging to her leg’s head comfortingly before trying her best to distract the younger long enough to murmur some comforting nonsense to hopefully ease the crying. It worked momentarily until the next quake hit, where it started all over. Out of time she cleared her throat, leaned her elbow on the intercom button to carry her instructions throughout the ship and strained her cracking voice to shout: “Alright everyone listen up! We’re flying–” 

Her words fell on deaf ears, the scared chatter overpowering her voice and her stature too small to gain much attention even with her standing on the crates as she was. Fashira reached her side and cupped her hands over her mouth so her voice boomed across the crowd: “Everyone listen! Your captain is speaking!”

With a thankful nod, Rielay tried again. “We’ll be taking off again asap to rendezvous at the  _Ark_! It’s going to be a rough ride so everyone please be aware of what’s around you and stay calm. When we reach the  _Ark_ exit this ship  calmly; Republic forces will be there to direct you properly!”

Two of the nearest evacuees took the children from her care, nodding at Rielay’s thank you’s and murmuring comforts to the shaking and crying children. Following in Fashira’s wake as the taller, broader, cathar woman cleared a path back to the bridge Rielay stomped down her building stress and took to the controls like a bat out of hell. “Watch the main area please, I don’t want any incidents.” 

“Just focus on getting us our of here, Rielay. I’ve got it.” 

“Activating fore, rear, and side shields.” Reading off the initial steps it took to get Deryn’s ship off the ground did far more to keep her calm than any focused breathing she had tried and she stuck to it, not looking too hard at the spires of lava spurting out of gouges in the planet’s surface. Damn Hutts, damn them,  _damn them–_

 _“_ Engaging thrusters and stabalizers, pushing engines…” The ship heaved itself off the ground, doing its best to maintain a straight course in the buffeting conditions as she guided them into the air. “Retracting landing gears and…we should be clear of the ground tremors now.” 

Rielay rested one knee on the captain’s seat, sticking her tongue in her cheek as she pushed the engines a little harder, eyeing the temp monitor nervously. “Either the ship is starting to feel it’s runs today or the core temperature of Makeb is going up. Or both.” 

But Fashira had been drawn out into the crowd, no doubt to cool rising tensions in the cramped spaces and the stress of separated families. “Right. Well, we’re almost in the upper atmosphere anyways. Keep it together.” she finished to herself, hissing out a breath between her teeth as the  _Phoenix_ punched through the clouds, trying not to think too hard about who could remain on the surface. 

The hangars were just as chaotic as the ground space had been, Rielay learned after docking the  _Phoenix_  and ushering her passengers into the capable and organized hands of the Republic forces stationed on the Ark–which in itself was docked at the Makeb Orbital Station, but all Makeb bodies had to go through the Ark to get to the Station on Custom’s rules, making things far more complicated than she cared to tolerate. 

 Across the hangar, filled with three other hired freighters, she saw the  _Promise_  as Zasharr had confirmed after picking up her holo on the first ring. The cathar himself hadn’t escaped such a long distance affirmation.  After the routine check over making sure there was a distinct lack of injuries and other life threatening complications Zasharr’s eyes widened as Rielay threw her arms around him–his arms flailing for a moment before settling gently around her with an awkward pat between her shoulder blades. “Aright Red, what’s this about?” 

“Let’s just…not do this again. Let’s not split up and go into a dying planet please.” She said into his shoulder before she slipped back, reigned back in her frayed nerves, and raked her hands through her hair, looking between the cathar duo and working up her ‘business- captain’ voice. “We’re going to have to refuel so if you two want to go find somewhere to rest, somewhere to eat or something feel free, it’s been a long day. I’ll holo when we get the green light to leave.” 

Fashira gave her a worried once over, then looked to the empty ship around them. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t wan to leave you here alone.”

Waving them off, she offered a tired smile. She didn’t need her crew here to watch her fret and pace, that usually didn’t require an audience. “I’m fine. Deryn let me know he’s coming to retrieve his ship and then I’m going to find Esrin.” 

After sharing a look they had probably hoped Rielay couldn’t read, reluctantly Fashira and Zasharr turned away and retreated down the ramp, disappearing into the thinning crowds. It was only a few minutes of silence occupied by her three holocalls to Esrin’s device that fell unanswered and the typed  _“Meet in hangar cresh-eighteen? Docked there._ ” that conveyed much less of the worry that was burning its way through her chest than she felt before Emeldir and his crew reached the  _Phoenix_. 

They looked worse for wear, with haphazard kolto patches covering burns and deeper cuts visible through torn sleeves and singed cuffs. “You look like you’ve been through hell and back.” 

Emeldir scoffed out what might’ve been a laugh as his crew all nodded to her and trudged off to clean off and treat their wounds. Risha hovered for a moment longer, letting her hand linger on Emeldir’s arm as something silent passed between them. Then she was gone and it was just the two of them. Whatever iron her fellow captain stiffened his spine with to stay energetic for his crew melted and he slumped against the wall, letting his head thump back against the metal. “I see my ship made it through alright, nice flying. Guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less. You alright too?”

“It was rough going, but I’ll consider not losing an engine a victory.” Shrugging her shoulder Rielay added: “Silly question, I’m fine, all I did was shout at people and fly.” She glanced down at her still-blank holocomm. Where was he? “Does it look like the planet is coming out of this?” 

Shaking his head, Emeldir’s voice dropped low. “No. We were able to evac who we could…but not every civilian made it to an evacuation point.” 

Sighing, Rielay pressed her lips together. That was a fact of these kinds of flights she tried not to think too hard on. She wasn’t going to think too hard on what civilian could be defined as and how many others had been left stranded without access to an evacuation point.“We can’t save ‘em all, kid, but we damn well tried.”

The pause bloated with guilt and a lack of conviction, Emeldir simply shook his head. “I know but…” He shook his head again and let the thought drop, instead crossing the small space to put his hands on Rielay’s shoulders. “Are you  _sure_ you’re alright?”

Her eyes darted up to him, an assurance already on the tip of her tongue until her look slipped back to the comm in her hand and she sank her teeth into her lower lip. “I’m…it’s just…the last contact I had was…” With a frustrated whine she raked a hand through her hair and then let it flop down to her side. “I think I’m just going to go back to my ship.” 

For a brief moment an argument passed over Emeldir’s face before he even said anything. All he said was: “I don’t just want to leave you in this hangar alone.” 

At that she did roll her eyes before softening at the kid’s typical worry. No crew member left behind–old or new–or whatever went through her fellow captain’s head. “You and your crew deserve some quiet. Besides, Fashira and Zasharr would come back if I asked them to.” 

Gently she took Emeldir’s hand from her shoulder. “I’ll be  _fine_ , okay? Just stressed and need to go back to my own ship.” 

–

She was curled halfway up the ramp of the  _Promise_ , leaning against one of the struts with her knees drawn as tightly towards her as her body would allow, when she saw the remaining crowd shifting ever so slightly. 

The holocomm fell from her hands–suddenly limp–and  _thudded_  down the ramp, spinning to a half at the base. Without looking down towards it she rocked to her feet, clinging to the strut as she pressed up on her toes to try and see over the dwindling sea of heads. 

“Es-” Her exhausted voice failed her before she cleared her throat and tried again, waving her hand above her head wildly like the only XS Freighter with the Corellian blood-stripes painted on its body wasn’t conspicuous enough. “Esrin!” 

By the time he made it to her she was teetering on the edge of the ramp, reaching for him. She all but fell against him when he wrapped his arms around her waist, waiting patiently as she her arms went around his neck. 

Esrin smelled like a warzone–dirt, sweat, smoke, charred plastoid–but he was safe and there right in front of her and that alone was enough to take the weight from her chest and let her breath again. 

Heart still hammering from the stress of it all and relief she pulled back, her hands sliding up to rest on either side of his jaw. For a moment her expression was one of soft solace. “Thank the stars you’re alright, with the chaos of everything…” Then her eyes turned stormy and sharp, brow creasing. “Were you really by the giant fissure? The one that caused this whole mess?” One hand dropped so she could slip her fingers through the charred straps of his armor at his shoulder. “That doesn’t happen on it’s own.” 

The question wasn’t phrased as such, after all it was more an admonishment than an actually inquiry and instead she punctuated her own words by tugging on the armor straps, urging him the half step closer she needed to kiss him–hard and filled with the cocktail of relief and exasperation that muddled inside her. “You’re a brave, selfless,  _idiot_  sometimes and it terrifies me.” She murmured when she pulled back, resting their foreheads together. 

When Esrin tipped his head down to press another chaste kiss to her lips it was soft, cooling her simmering temper. “Things got a little out of hand.” He agreed, the ‘ _it was our duty’_ laying unsaid but implied. She had to remind herself that he was still a soldier in the Republic’s army. “I didn’t mean to drop completely out of contact. I’m sorry.”

“I hated not knowing what was going on…” Rielay sighed, repeating: “I’m just glad your alright.” 

“I am.” As she bobbed her head in semi, distracted agreement he brought a hand up to push her hair behind her ear, cradling her head and catching her attention. “Rie, I am, I promise. Are  _you_?”

Trying to suppress the slight tremble in her voice only accentuated it and Rielay grumbled. “I’m  _fine_ , I wish everyone would stop asking me that.” A slightly watery laugh. “I mean I got to fly Deryn’s ship, that in it’s self is…” Seeing as it was getting her nowhere but into a deeper hole of not believing her she stopped and reassessed what she was saying. “Trust me, I’m fine, the baby’s fine. Just tired.” 

That at least chased the worry from his expression that had festered at her rambling. “Then how about we find somewhere a little less busy, we can find something to eat, somewhere to rest while they refuel your ship.” 

In the middle of nodding an actual, not disbelieving nod she paused. “You are flying home with me,  _right_?” At his pause her voice hitched up a notch, the ball of stress in her mind coiling tight again. “ _Esrin_?” 

Thea idea of traveling the three days back to Corellia–she  _certainly_  wasn’t going to get the clearance to stick around Makeb space for an extended period of time–and being back and alone outside of Coronet City where things weren’t even fully settled and Sirixa was starting her first year of secondary school was very nearly enough to drive her stress through the roof again. 

“I should be able to fly home with you, don’t worry.” Gently, but insistently Esrin pulled her into motion, helping her hop off the ramp and pushing away her overwhelming, looming idea of Corellia as they drifted into the crowd. 

Tucked against his side they navigated their way through the lingering crowd, denser than it had seemed from the ramp of her ship, until they broke into the main, open area of the orbital station. There were some soldiers milling about, some typing furiously at the data terminals while some simply sat against the walls, dozing or munching on food. Within a few moments they joined the soldiers in the calm, finding a quiet corner to find reprieve in. 

It was out of the glaring florescent of the main lighting, casting it in soft shadow in it’s deepest corner, and the noise from the hangars and intercoms was muffled ever so slightly. It was peaceful, more peaceful than any structure over the raging Makeb had any right to be. 

But that was okay, because Rielay didn’t need the commotion of Makeb, she didn’t  _want it_. She just wanted to stay the way she was, in that bubble of quiet, warm in against Esrin’s side–he had removed the hard shell of his plastoid armor sometime when they had sat down, leaving him in a black long sleeve shirt–and finally letting her heavy eyelids drift close. 

 


	42. Rielay and Esrin: “You’ve gotta stop doing that.”“What?”“Saying things that make me want to kiss you.

It wasn’t often that Rielay needed to get off planet anymore. Ever since she and Esrin had settled on Corellia, had their daughter Rina, she had left the smuggling world behind her, taking instead to working with starships on the ground to keep herself busy. 

That, however, didn’t mean she had parted from her beloved freighter. No, she still had the  _Promise_ , in all of its weathered glory. It still got its flights, to and from Odessen had become common, if not frequent. Her ship, with as much as it had seen, had been kept in impeccable condition. As if she would have ever let her ship fall into disrepair. It was a habit, a comfort really, to go out and make sure all the systems continued to run properly. Sometimes it would only take her a matter of minutes, other times if she had the extra minutes to spare she would tweak things with care. 

Then, one day the systems wouldn’t start at all. 

Rielay paused, having already turned away from the control board on the assumption that her ship would hum to life around her. Slowly, she turned back and brought her hand back to the controls, flipping several switched back and then forward again. 

Nothing. 

“Okay.” Rielay’s face twisted into an irritated look, confusion clouding her eyes. “That’s weird.” 

She brought her hand back, then placed it on a switch. The main system of the ship…

Wouldn’t work. 

The engines…

Wouldn’t work. 

Another flick–

_Why_

The pull of a lever–

_Wouldn’t_

The press of several buttons as she entered in a code–

_Anything_

Her hand smacked down onto the metal. 

“ _Work_ , dammit!” She growled, then stepped back, steepling her hands in front of her eyes. 

Right, she had been fixing ships for years and she knew her own ship like the back of her hand. It must be a loose connection somewhere, a broken piece of something, maybe even a misconnection somewhere if she had brushed against the wrong thing. 

Worst came to worse, she’d need to order a new part and fix her ship later. How many times had her ship broken down before? This was fixable, and at least now she didn’t have a pressing deadline. 

Her huffed exhalation was followed by an exasperated look around at the metal walls surrounding her. “Couldn’t have been the ramp again?” She asked the empty air. “I  _know_  how to fix the ramp at this point.” 

Methodically she went through her entire ship, checking and rechecking everything. First, the engine room, then the hyperdrive to make sure that no connection there would override anything else. She went through each little crawlspace that held the power in her ship, taking each removable piece of the wall and replacing it with a calm that grew increasingly more falsified with each check that came back with nothing wrong. 

“Okaay.” Rielay drew out the word, punctuating it with a sigh as she raked her hand through her hair and stood from her crouched position by the engine. “Everything’s clear…it’ll start now.” 

Replacing the metal plate of the wall she made her way back to the bridge and held her breath as she flicked a serious of switches again. 

The control board remained dark, not even the barest flickering of lights coming to life. “Karking piece of scrap.” Rielay thumped her fist down, frowning. She must have missed something. 

Another round made around her ship, checking and rechecking. Another flick of switches. Met with silence. 

Rielay bit her lip, narrowing her eye at the stretch of metal covered in buttons and levers. Hopefully, she reached out once more and gave one last poke at the switch. Still nothing. 

“What the  _hell_?” Her voice broke a little bit. She had had a very good idea of what had happened ever since her first round of checks had come back all clear. Her poking around had been hopeful, wishful thinking. 

She had been around enough starships to know that when a ship close to twenty-years her senior that had seen more of the galaxy and its troubles than most others stopped working it wasn’t from an overload in the power systems. 

Taking a deep breath she walked off the bridge, down the ramp, and through the door of their house with an air of calm. Esrin took one look at her, ushered Rina up to her room and asked; “What is it Rie?” 

He could always read her far too well. 

It sounded stupid even in her own head, to say it out loud even to her husband felt like she was about to make a fool of herself. “I think the Promise has seen the last of her flights.” To her own relief, her voice was steady, even as she felt her good eye prickling with the beginnings of tears. 

She shouldn’t be crying over a Force-fucking ship, but it wasn’t just a ship. That was her home,  _had_  been her home for years. That ship held many of her best memories, that ship was her livelihood.  _Had_ been her livelihood. 

It felt wrong that she might need to sell it, made a small wave of panic wash over her because what if she needed it? What if. what if? There were a lot of baseless  _what ifs_  that floated through her mind in the span of a few seconds. 

She didn’t  _need_ her little freighter anymore, she wasn’t a smuggler out in the stars, she had left that life. She wouldn’t need to go anywhere that she couldn’t take a transport to get to, she didn’t have any more cargo she’d need to cart. Corellia was her home now, where she, Esrin and their little girl had put down their roots. 

Esrin, thank the stars for him, came over and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, brushing a hand over her head as a muffled, strangled breath that refused to be the beginning of tears escaped her. “Do you think it can be fixed?” 

Her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug even as she shook her head. “I checked everything, nothing’s wrong.” 

He hesitated a little longer before his next question like he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. “…do you think someone else could take a look at it?”

Immediately she bristled, tensing. She had been taking care of her ship for years, servicing it herself except when absolutely necessary she was plenty qualified to know when something couldn’t be fixed. She rocked back, sharp retort building in her throat, eye narrowing before she let her breath rush out between her teeth in a hiss. “ _Maybe_  that would be best.” She swiped a hand under her eye, biting her lip. “A second opinion.” 

“Alright, we can take a look at that.” Esrin’s voice was soothing, his hand rubbing circles between her shoulders. “Maybe its something fixable.” 

As the galaxy would have it her instinct was right. There wasn’t anything broken in her ship, nothing that could be fixed. It was simply a very old freighter that had seen twice the activity of most of freighters her age. So within a few days the  _Promise_  was cleared of anything of importance and a crew was clearing away the last of its metal for scrap. 

She sat on the steps outside their front door, chin resting in her hand. It felt very wrong, letting her ship get stripped away piece by piece, part by part. Part of her wanted to go snatch one of the parts from the workers, grab as many as she could and make a run for it. Briefly she entertained the idea before shaking it away, letting out a breath she felt like she had been holding, running her hands over her face and through her hair. 

Soon they were gone, and empty dirt was all that remained of where the  _Promise_  had once stood. It was too empty and she started to get up before the door opened behind her and Esrin stepped out, easing himself down onto the step beside her. 

“So it’s gone…” he noted, following her gaze over to the empty spot, now bathed in sunlight where there had once been shadow. “I’m sorry your ship broke, Rie.” 

“S’justa ship.” Rielay muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. “the thing was ancient.” 

They both knew that was wrong, but Esrin didn’t call her on it. Instead, he drew something from his pocket, hidden from her when she glanced over. “When they started disassembling the  _Promise_  I found a small piece, I figured if I got the sharp edges sanded away well…” He held his opened palm towards her, where a little piece of her ship, tarnished grey with the edge of what must’ve been the two stripes painted on the exterior, no bigger than her thumbnail, the sharp edges worn down and little hole whittled into the top. 

Gently she picked it up, letting it rest in her palm. “Oh, Esrin.” she smiled, eye shining when she looked up at him. “It’s unfair that you still do this after so many years.” 

“Do what?”

She smiled, leaning over to kiss Esrin without thought. “Make me wanna do that. Do and say things that make me want to kiss you.”

Pulling away she unclasped the delicate, yet sturdy chain she wore around her neck, the chain that her wedding ring hung from, less likely to be lost. Curiously she tried to string the piece of her ship through and found that it slid easily onto the chain, clinking softly against her wedding ring. She gave a soft laugh, looking up at Esrin. “Stars, I love you.” 

Esrin smiled back, helping her clasp the chain around her neck again before letting his arm settle around her shoulders. “I know it’s not your ship, but its a piece of it.” 

“It could’ve been a pebble from someone’s shoe on the floor and it’d still be the sweetest thing.” She said matter-of-factly, letting her head rest on Esrin’s shoulder. 

While the  _Promise’s_ hulking form may have been gone, the little piece of metal settled, cool near her heart, and it no longer seemed like a piece of her was being torn away. 

 


End file.
